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by Denise Finley (Author)
Every minute, three people in the U.S. are diagnosed with diabetes, for a total of 20.9 million people living with the disease (as of 2011, so that number is probably even higher now). That's up from just 5.6 million in 1980. Currently, about 7% of people in the US have diabetes, but that doesn't actually tell the whole story. An estimated 86 million more have pre-diabetes (blood sugar high enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be diabetes.Diabetes is sometimes called a "lifestyle disease," meaning that it's caused by lifestyle factors like diet and exercise, rather than a particular germ or gene. It's often (but not always!) associated with other lifestyle diseases like obesity, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, because the same kinds of lifestyle patterns tend to cause more than one of those problems.When the Paleo crowd starts talking about diabetes, we typically start from the fact that it's almost unknown in traditional cultures, even among people in later middle-age. The natural suggestion from there is to eat like people in those cultures - minimal processed and refined foods. But there are a few problems with this, all those traditional groups eat differently, so who do you want to imitate, the ultra low-carb and diabetes-free Maasai, or the high-carb and equally diabetes-free Kitavans? Also, diet isn't the only difference. Lifestyle factors like sleep and exercise also have a huge effect on diabetes: it's not just food. A diet that works in the context of one lifestyle might not work in another. Prevention isn't the same as cure. People who've lived in the modern world their whole lives might need more intensive intervention than people who've always been healthy.
