Type two diabetes has been known as a lot of things. In the South of American people call it having the ‘sugar’, it used to be known as adult onset diabetes before it started to affect younger people too and in India type two diabetes is known as the rich man’s disease. Or at least it was, before it started to affect the urban poor at a much more aggressive rate than anyone else.
The disease is so common across the globe the misconceptions and beliefs surrounding it are understandable. It’s very much an epidemic which has come about as poorer quality high-fat foods have become cheaper and easier to prepare than more traditional meals. Unlike type one diabetes which has a primarily environmental/genetic component to it, type two diabetes’ most profound cause is being overweight or obese.
You might think that only those who’re earning more money would be able to afford to overeat to the extent required to get to that level of obesity, but this isn’t the case. For a start, excessive consumption of fried foods is a massive contributing factor to weight loss. In the USA, the country which is worst hit by type two diabetes could be because of fast food restaurants. In India this could well be their more traditional fare of samosa, kachori or gulab jamun. The fact is that fried foods are tasty, cheap and quick to prepare and in the world today there’s nothing which is quite as valued as convenience is.
The issue with Indian slum-dwellers contracting type two diabetes at the rate they are (¼ are now said to have the condition) is that they’re unlikely to get the treatment or information they’ll require to manage their condition. That means that though type two diabetes can be easily lived with if it’s controlled, they’ll probably suffer the worst symptoms of the disease and they will, in all likeliness die from the condition never knowing what it was.
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