Oprah and Dr. Oz

If in that location were a deadly disease raging through your body, wouldn't you want to know how to stop it? Unfortunately, more than than vi million Americans are walking around with a silent killer eating away at their health—and they have no idea they're even at risk. That silent killer is diabetes, the fastest-growing disease in history.

It's estimated that 80 million people in the United States have diabetes or are on the verge of developing this disease. Diabetes is specially prevalent in the African-American community, where it claims nearly 100 lives every single twenty-four hour period. "It's time to get out of denial," Oprah says.

Because so many people are afflicted, the United states is forced to spend $174 billion a year treating this disease—more than AIDS and all cancers combined. "If nosotros don't fix the trouble of diabetes in this country, we will bankrupt our futurity ability to pay for healthcare in the nation," Dr. Oz says.

Equally a eye surgeon, Dr. Oz says 25 percentage of the patients he operates on have diabetes. However, he says in that location's promise for anyone who'due south suffering or at adventure. "Most diabetes is preventable," he says. "Information technology is treatable, even reversible."

At that place are 2 types of diabetes: type 1 and type two.

Type one diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, affects 10 percentage of Americans diagnosed with diabetes. "[Yous're] not making plenty insulin. That's mostly from genetic reasons because your pancreas just doesn't work correctly," he says. "Blazon ane has nothing to do to prevent it from happening. At that place's a lot we can do to treat yous once information technology happens."

Type 2 develops from lifestyle issues. "[Patients] accept a lot of belly fat and the like, and they take enough insulin," he says. "Simply it's not listening anymore because the belly fat has poisoned the ability of insulin to piece of work, so the sugar is still floating around because it can't discover a partner to get into your tissues."

Though type 2 affects virtually of the population, Dr. Oz says it's the most treatable. Patients just have to start making improve lifestyle choices. "Xc percent of type 2 diabetics tin can actually reverse their problem," he says.

Dr. Oz discusses sugar.

Diabetes, particularly type 2, is the fastest-growing disease in history because of i matter—saccharide. Dr. Oz says the average person eats 150 pounds of sugar a year. "That's 40 pounds of extra sugar that nosotros're eating every single yr equally opposed to merely a generation ago," he says. "Information technology is impossible for our body to keep upward with that. There is no style we can suit this rapidly."

Sugar often becomes an addiction, Dr. Oz says. "When y'all go to a store to purchase food, when you lot go to a supermarket, to a restaurant, and you go a little bit of saccharide, it stimulates the same part of your brain every bit crack cocaine," he says. "Information technology just turns you lot on."

Fifty-fifty if you try to control your intake, Dr. Oz says carbohydrate is oft hidden in products you wouldn't expect. "It'southward subconscious in our condiments," he says. "It's hidden in our salad dressing."

Sentry Bob Greene's surprising expose on hidden sugarsWatch

Dr. Oz explains diabetes.

Dr. Oz says 1 of the major misconceptions about diabetes is that it'due south but a sugar trouble. The truth is, you lot do need some sugar.

Your body uses saccharide (likewise called simple carbohydrates) to help the encephalon retrieve and continue muscles moving. When y'all eat, your nutrient goes through a digestive process that separates carbohydrate and glucose from the rest. That sugar makes its way into your bloodstream. In a healthy body, the pancreas releases insulin, a hormone which helps funnel carbohydrate from the bloodstream to tissues that demand it.

Scout Dr. Oz'due south blitheness of what diabetes does to your body.Watch

Yet, besides much sugar can exist a serious problem. "We store it in our abdomen," Dr. Oz says. "But that belly fat, the omentum, gets ponderously big. And as it does that, it poisons the insulin so it no longer can work and the saccharide cannot leave of the bloodstream."

This causes bug for the middle. "The blood vessels are very delicate," he says. "The carbohydrate is similar pieces of glass shard scraping at information technology."

These shards leave small holes on the inside of the artery. "Our body scars in an effort to heal it. It's a delicate repair," Dr. Oz says. "It breaks; it ruptures. Now you have an open up surface that'southward sore."

As a scab forms over that sore, Dr. Oz says it gets larger and hardens the arteries—leading to a heart attack. "A diabetic will most probable dice from a heart set on," he says.

See how diabetes can impact your eyeWatch

What diabetes does to your kidneys

Dr. Oz says this dangerous scarring takes place in all other torso tissues. "That's a problem because that influences all of our organs."

For that reason, Dr. Oz says diabetics are at high gamble of kidney failure."Here's a picture of a normal kidney on the left. Beautiful. Plump. Robust," he says. "Look at the kidney on the correct. It's shrunken. It'southward shriveled. It'due south been killed. That's a diabetic kidney."

Diabetes and your eyesight

Diabetes can also affect the way you run across the world. "In the optics, the blood vessels are very fragile," he says. "Those delicate little vessels crack. A little tiny crevice in a big vessel, and the claret accumulates."

Every bit the blood accumulates, you aren't able to see as much as you did before. "Do yous see those dark areas? That'south a charley horse in the eye," he says. "That's your view of the world. ... It's not just a little chip of carbohydrate."

Dr. Oz on amputation

In the United States, approximately 86,000 diabetes-related amputations are performed every yr.

In severe cases, a diabetic's blood vessels expect like bent straws that cut off claret period to the legs. "The diabetes causes scarring on the inside and basically kinks it off. Information technology kinks it off in multiple places so we tin can't even get effectually them," he says. "You lot can't fix that if you're a doctor."

The condition tin reduce your ability to fight infections in your lower extremities by shutting off the supply of white blood cells, Dr Oz says. "[In] a lot of diabetes [cases], the commencement time they know they've got a trouble is they get an infection in their toe. They don't feel their toe and so well considering it affects their nerves, and and so they end up losing their anxiety."

An amputee's plea to those with diabetesWatch

Dr. Oz explains the warning signs of diabetes.

Dr. Oz says the symptoms for both types of diabetes are straightforward:

Constant thirst and frequent urination: These are the beginning things doctors will ask you about. "You have [constant thirst] considering yous're urinating all the fourth dimension," he says. "The sugar gets into your urine, and it really drags it through your kidneys. Information technology fools your kidneys."

Non-healing infections: "The white claret cells that protect the immune system can't become there," he says. "And past the way, your white cells don't function unremarkably. Your whole allowed system's depressed because y'all're waging a abiding civil war against your body, which has the sugar scraping abroad on the within."

Tingling toes: "Fretfulness have a cable around them," Dr. Oz says. "That cablevision gets cleaved with diabetes, so you cease upward with short circuits of your nerve system."

Blurred vision: "Y'all're having little bleeds in the back of your centre," he says.

Dr. Oz outlines the risk factors of diabetes.

Dr. Oz says there are 4 major chance factors for type 2 diabetes:

Abdomen fatty: A big belly is the number one risk factor in America, and Dr. Oz has a simple test to see if you take too much: "If your waist size, measured at your belly push button is more than half of your height, then you've got likewise much belly and you're at gamble for diabetes."

Sedentary lifestyle: Physical action is fundamental to preventing or reversing diabetes. "When y'all exercise and practise muscle-building work, the muscle actually becomes more sensitive to insulin," he says. "The insulin tin work better. It can bulldoze the sugar where it's supposed to go."

Family history: "If you've got relatives who have diabetes or if you had diabetes when you were meaning, big warning signs."

Smoking: Cigarettes not just harm your lungs, "information technology kills your pancreas," Dr. Oz says.

Dr. Oz and Dr. Ian Smith on why diabetes has hit hardest in the African-American community.

Out of the 85 million people who accept been diagnosed with diabetes, the African-American community has been hitting particularly hard. Dr. Oz says the biggest reason is lack of access to affordable, healthy food. "The cheapest calories in America are the calories with no nutrients," Dr. Oz says. "So especially among the young, in their neighborhoods they can't get the foods they need to be able to eat, and the foods they need are expensive. The Hispanic [population is] very hard striking for the same reason."

Dr. Ian Smith, the medical and diet expert behind the fifty Meg Pound Challenge, says the obesity epidemic has spiraled out of command. African Americans are twice as likely to have type 2 diabetes, develop finish-stage kidney disease, accept amputations and die from the disease. "African-Americans are facing an obesity crunch," he says. "It's literally killing us."

Dr. Smith says part of the trouble lies with bad habits. "Habits are tough to intermission, especially for African-Americans when their habits are effectually food, which is like a civilisation for them," he says. "Food is love and comfort."

Another major battle is attitudes toward eating and exercising. "Transgenerationally, we've eaten this way, and African-Americans have this 'heels in the footing' arroyo," he says. "This is a disease often about attitude, and attitude has a lot to exist desired right now. We have to improve our attitudes near it."

Bob Greene

Fitness expert Bob Greene says physical activity tin can literally save the life of someone at gamble for diabetes. "When information technology comes to diabetes, we know that if yous simply get 30 minutes a day, your chance is lowered by 60 percent," he says. "Practice is not negotiable."

Diabetes is a disease close to Bob's heart. "Both of my parents have diabetes," he says. "Through lifestyle, you can modify your risk and, in most cases, forestall this affliction."

Incorporating exercise into your life doesn't accept to be overwhelming. Bob says 2 unproblematic activities can reduce your take chances, weight and symptoms dramatically:

  • Walk 30 minutes a twenty-four hour period.
  • Start strength preparation. "This tin can be done with bands or weights. My favorite is dumbbells," he says. "Maintaining the muscles and the joints is so of import in combating diabetes considering it raises your metabolism."

Get 3 more of Bob's strategies for dealing with diabetes

Dr. Oz, Dr. Ian Smith and Oprah

Dr. Oz and Dr. Smith have one message for anyone who thinks they may be at risk for diabetes: Don't expect to get tested. "Nigh always you can reverse information technology," Dr. Oz says. "What you can't ever reverse are the side effects of what that glass shrapnel has already done inside of you."

If you already have diabetes, make sure you are on height of your condition. "Diabetes is years and years and so you don't experience the immediate outcome of it, and that'southward why people say, 'I'll make a modify tomorrow,'" Dr. Smith says. "Why await until it's a crisis situation? Await until the md says that you have to take insulin or you're going to have an amputation? Exercise something about it at present."

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