Actos: Why the Difference?

The risk factors for Type 2 diabetes are well known, but worth reviewing: primarily, these factors are obesity in combination with a sedentary lifestyle, and genetics.

The last issue – genetics – play a larger role among some ethnic groups than others. In fact, people who have Native American ancestry are over twice as like likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those of European descent, simply because they are Native American. According to a Cherokee Nation newspaper, a whopping 30% of people of American Indian or Inuit extraction are pre-diabetic.

Why?

Again, genetics play a large role – but it is far simpler than that.

Poverty, which is at its most extreme on Indian Reservations in the West (if you are curious about what a Third World Country looks like, visit a reservation in one of the western states sometime) is of course a risk factor. However, as one M.A. Hill pointed out in a 1997 article, diabetes was unknown among indigenous Americans prior to 1940. Starting around 1950, the rates of diabetes in these populations started to skyrocket. This has been happening not only to Native Americans, but also to Polynesian peoples in  Hawaii, Tahiti and other Pacific Islands. In Australia, aboriginal peoples suffer from Type 2 diabetes at a rate that is as much as four times that of their Euro-Australian counterparts. Maori peoples in neighboring New Zealand have similarly grim prognoses; 20% of them are at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes.

The key here is a radical shift in dietary habits over a very brief period of less than a hundred years. Indigenous peoples in all parts of the world, left alone and untouched by the "advantages" of Western Civilization, would normally eat a diet that is high in protein and low in carbohydrates. The carbs normally consumed would be of the complex type, derived from wild foods such as berries, tree fruit and root vegetables.

What would be completely absent is refined sugars and the simple carbs found in white, refined flour.

Keep in mind that these people had been getting their food from hunting and gathering wild, edible plants for thousands of years. Then, in the space of less than ten decades, indigenous peoples were introduced to a completely different diet – while being stripped of the culture and hunting/fishing-gathering lifestyle that kept them physically active.

Is there is a lesson here, particularly those who would like to avoid having to take anti-diabetic drugs with all the risks those entail? After all, superficial, outward differences between different peoples, such as skin, hair and eye color, are virtually meaningless on a genetic level. When it comes to our inner physiology, there are virtually no differences except those of degree; people of European ancestry have had a bit more time to get used to refined sugars and carbohydrates in their diets, but that doesn't mean those are any better for them.

Sources

Gibson, Eloise. "One In Five Maori at Risk of Diabetes, Says Study. New Zealand Herald, 23 Jan 2009.

King, Gail. "Type II Diabetes, the Modern Epidemic of American Indians in the United States." Available at http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant570/Papers/King/king.htm .

N/A. "Ten Ways American Indians Can Prevent Type 2 Diabetes." National Diabetes Education Program (http://ndep.nih.gov/media/ten-ways-american-indians.pdf ).

N/A. "What Do We Know About Diabetes Among Indigenous Peoples?" Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/health-facts/health-faqs/diabetes )

Staff Writer. "Good Oral Health Critical For Diabetic Patients." Cherokee Phoenix, 2 Dec 2011.

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