Disease Proof

Maybe I’m wrong on this—chances are I am—but I think most people compartmentalize disease. I don’t think they realize having one disease can lead to another and so on and so on. Take this guy for example. Mr. Smith didn’t realize his diabetes was setting him up for a heart attack. Gina Kolata of The New York Times reports:

Mr. Smith, a 43-year-old pastor in Fairmont, Minn., tried hard. When dieting did not work, he began counting carbohydrates, taking pills to lower his blood sugar and pricking his finger several times a day to measure his sugar levels. They remained high, so he agreed to add insulin to his already complicated regimen. Blood sugar was always on his mind.


But in focusing entirely on blood sugar, Mr. Smith ended up neglecting the most important treatment for saving lives — lowering the cholesterol level. That protects against heart disease, which eventually kills nearly everyone with diabetes.

He also was missing a second treatment that protects diabetes patients from heart attacks — controlling blood pressure. Mr. Smith assumed everything would be taken care of if he could just lower his blood sugar level…

…Mr. Smith, like 90 percent of diabetes patients, has Type 2 diabetes, the form that usually arises in adulthood when the insulin-secreting cells of the pancreas cannot keep up with the body’s demand for the hormone. The other form of diabetes, Type 1, is far less common and usually arises in childhood or adolescence when insulin-secreting pancreas cells die.

And, like many diabetes patients, Mr. Smith ended up paying the price for his misconceptions about diabetes. Last year, he had a life-threatening heart attack.

Apparently it never dawned on him that his fatness might be setting him up for diabetes either. To get the full effect of this article, check out the video report. There are a couple dopey quotes from the doctors they interviewed. Take a look:


You’ve got to love it when medical professionals downplay just how much diet factors into the development of diseases. It makes you wonder where they're getting their doctorates from—Hamburger U! Now, back to reality, we all know that diet is a major determinant of disease, especially when you’re fat like Mr. Smith. Dr. Fuhrman talks about it in Eat to Live:

Overweight individuals are more likely to die from all causes, including heart disease and cancer. Two-thirds of those with weight problems also have hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, or another obesity-related condition.1 It is a major cause of early mortality in the United States.2 Since dieting almost never works and the health risks of obesity are so life-threatening, more and more people are desperately turning to drugs and surgical procedures to lose weight…


…As a good rule of thumb: for optimal health and longevity, a man should not have more than one-half inch of skin that he can pinch near his umbilicus (belly button) and a woman should not have more than one inch. Almost any fat on the body over this minimum is a health risk. If you have gained even as little as ten pounds since the age of eighteen or twenty, then you could be at significant increased risk for health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. The truth is that most people who think they are at the right weight still have too much fat on their body.

So, with that being said, maybe Mr. Smith should spend less time in church and more time in the gym. Not to mention snagging a copy of Eat to Live so that he can get rid of all those pills and syringes.
1. Clinical guidelines on the identification, evaluation, and treatment of overweight and obesity in adults. 1998. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute reprint. Bethesda, Md.: National Institutes of Health.

2. Must, Spadano, et al. Op. cit.; Allison, D. B., K. R. Fontaine, J. E. Manson, et al. 1999. Annual deaths attributable to obesity in the United States. JAMA 282 (16): 1530–38.