7 out of 10 People 65 and older have Diabetes!

"Seven out of ten people 65 and older have diabetes or prediabetes (glucose levels that are too high, but not high enough to diagnose type 2), but half of them don't know it. This means that their bodies are already being stressed and possibly damaged as a result of high blood sugar." The article was in a Diabetes Health e-newsletter:


I read that and honestly I have to tell you, it shocked me!! Can this really be true?! 7 out of 10 people over age 65. That is downright depressing and even weird. Something is making people sick!

My husband sent me another couple of articles: Chromium Deficiency = Diabetes Risk and Why High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Insulin Resistance.

"Dr. Schroeder revealed all of this decades ago and identified the key agent as the mineral chromium incorporated within whole grains and whole sugar cane.

Schroeder noted that more than 90 per cent of chromium is removed from whole grains to make white flour and white bread. In the case of white sugar 98 per cent of chromium is removed to make white sugar.

My aside: "Brown sugar for most of us is out, but some of us eat whole grains. Chromium is a naturally-occurring mineral, trace amounts of which are found in everyday foods like meat, poultry, fish, and whole-grain breads. FDA recommends a daily chromium intake of approximately 130 mcg, as infinitesimal amounts of chromium are needed to aid the transport of blood glucose across cell membranes Combining chromium with picolinic acid simply aids in efficient chromium absorption, and it is this combined form that is popular on the diet market today."

A quote from the second article:

"Fructose is much more readily metabolized to fat in the liver than glucose, and in the process can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. NAFLD in turn leads to hepatic insulin resistance and type II diabetes.

Scientists have clearly linked the rising HFCS consumption to the epidemics of obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome in the U.S., and medical researchers have pinpointed various health dangers associated with the consumption of HFCS compared to regular sugar."

It seems the biggest contributor of HFCS is in regular sodas. Ironically, in the early 1990's when I was writing my diabetic dessert cookbooks using Splenda Granular, we were told that people with diabetes could occasionally use fructose over sugar. A couple of my recipes contained granular fructose. Later, we heard that fructose raises triglycerides. I'm under the impression though that a high-carb diet or even sugar raises triglycerides.

Eating fruit with fructose in it is not a problem, because apparently the enzymes in the fruit help us to digest the fructose properly. It is in the absence of these enzymes that the trouble occurs.

Anyway, this was all rather interesting. I remember also blogging about a chemical in white flour that can cause diabetes in susceptible people: toxic substance in white flour.