Before you help yourself to that second serving of stuffing, remember that this is Diabetes Awareness Month. And while I admire the American Diabetes Association (ADA) for it’s excellent promotional work, I sometimes wonder if they chose November solely to maximize cognitive dissonance for the public.
Being sandwiched (no pun intended) between Halloween and all those December holiday parties, November is a carb-lovers dream, and I’m the first to succumb. Come next week I’d be mainlining pumpkin pie if they made a needle with a large enough gauge.
But being the good soldier, I felt it necessary to devote at least a few paragraphs to the disorder that everyone seems to be treating like the next infectious pandemic. (Don’t worry — it’s not contagious.) No, Type 2 diabetes is a “lifestyle” disease, one associated with our increasingly sedentary, high-calorie ways.
The statistics are easily accessible on the ADA site, so I won’t bore you with them. Instead I’d like to concentrate on the prevention side of the equation. And unlike so many other disorders with murky causes and treatments, adult-onset diabetes