Britain's diabetes population has risen by more than 167,000 since last year, figures show.

UK's diabetes population rises by thousands
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The total number of sufferers is now almost 2.5 million with the latest increase more than double the 2006 to 2007 rise of 83,000.

In England, an almost seven per cent increase means the number of people with diabetes has passed two million for the first time, the charity Diabetes UK said.

Over the same period the proportion of people with diabetes rose by 6.8 per cent in Northern Ireland and six per cent in Wales.

Scotland experienced the biggest rise in the UK - 16.7 per cent - partly due to improved recording of cases.

Almost nine in 10 diabetes sufferers have the type 2 form of the disease which is strongly associated with obesity and lifestyle.

There are around five million obese people in the UK, compared with almost 4.8 million last year.

Douglas Smallwood, chief executive of Diabetes UK, said: "These are truly alarming figures.

"Part of why we have seen such a huge increase can be attributed to improved screening from healthcare services and greater awareness amongst those at high risk of type 2 diabetes.

"However, there is no getting away from the fact that this large increase is linked to the obesity crisis."

He added: "Diabetes is one of the biggest health challenges facing the UK today.

"It causes heart disease, stroke, amputations, kidney failure and blindness, and more deaths than breast and prostate cancer combined.

"The NHS already spends one million pounds an hour on diabetes. The soaring diabetes prevalence will continue to put a massive strain on an already struggling NHS and unless it can respond, people's health could spiral downwards."

The reasons for the continued rise in the incidence of type 2 obesity are, of course,

decades of misinformation from doctors, nutritionists, dieticians and other 'obesity experts' about what causes obesity and how best to prevent/reduce it

decades of reckless endangerment of the population's health by food manufacturers who have ladled shockingly high amounts of salt into their appallingly unhealthy processed junk/ready meals/cornflakes/crisps/bacon/sausages and a myriad other ghastly products purporting to be food

the perversion of children's taste by 1) the marketing of salty snacks to children, when children are the largest of the groups of people who are vulnerable to salt and 2) the horrifyingly unsuitable muck that for years was served up to them as 'school dinners' - e.g. the notorious, salty 'turkey twizzlers', for which successive governments surely must shoulder most of the responsibility/blame

over 50 years of inappropriate/reckless prescribing, often in high dose, of drugs like steroids, antidepressants, antipsychotics, etc which compromise the walls of the blood vessels, thus leading to increased blood volume/fluid retention/salt sensitivity/weight gain/obesity and the malign and painful retinue of other degenerative illnesses that obesity causes

There have been so many dreadful years of dieting, hunger, unhappiness, dangerous drugs and accelerated harm because the diet industry has relentlessly barked up the wrong tree, insisting that overweight people must cut down on calories/food/fat/carbohydrates, etc and try ridiculously unnatural and inadequate diets.

Until the truth is told - and nothing BUT the truth - about how to prevent/reduce obesity, then the increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes and all the other illnesses attendant on obesity, aka fluid retention, will continue inexorably to rise. - It is FLUID RETENTION that needs to be addressed - the real cause of obesity - not over-eating, the completely imaginary cause that doctors and the other ill-informed diet bullies have invented.

Obesity is not caused by eating to excess or by insufficient exercise. There has never been a scrap of reproducible scientific research or evidence to support the theory that excess calorie intake causes obesity, nor that calorie deficit reduces obesity. The theory and the advice it spawns should be abandoned forthwith. They cause great harm and suffering.

When people whose blood vessels are weaker than the norm eat salt, the result is weight gain and obesity (because of excess sodium and water held in the blood vessels and elsewhere). This condition is also known as sodium retention, water retention, fluid retention, salt sensitivity or oedema. If these people reduce their salt intake they lose some of the excess sodium and water, and so lose weight, and if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables they lose weight faster, because the potassium in the fruit and vegetables displaces some of the excess sodium from the body.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in foods and

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION