Obesity blamed for diabetes rise

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

New Zealanders' expanding waistlines are contributing to a diabetes epidemic.

Type 2 diabetes, an often crippling disease that afflicted about 82,000 adults in 1996, is forecast to affect more than 145,000 in 2011 - an increase of 77 per cent.

Announcing its diabetes forecasts yesterday, the Ministry of Health attributed at least a third of the increase to the growing numbers of people who are overweight.

The rest it put down to demographic trends such as a growing and older population and a rising percentage of Maori and Pacific Islanders.

These ethnic groups are already three times more likely than Pakeha to develop diabetes.

Up to 111,000 people now suffer the main forms of diabetes, and about 10 per cent have Type 1, the insulin-dependent form that usually starts by the age of 16 and is caused by genes and possibly a virus.

Type 2 is often referred to as adult-onset diabetes, but Dr Robyn Toomath, president of the Society for the Study of Diabetes, said this was becoming a misnomer.

"Every month - sometimes several times a month - we are diagnosing it in teenagers.

"This is because of the prevalence of obesity," said Dr Toomath, a Wellington Hospital endocrinologist and head of a new group called Fight the Obesity Epidemic.

She called on the Government to impose a tax on fatty foods - an idea Health Minister Annette King has dismissed in the past - and for schools to ban soft-drink vending Machines and sales of "rubbish" foods.

Diabetics' bodies have a shortage or total absence of the hormone insulin, needed to process glucose.

The disease damages arteries and nerves. It is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure and lower-limb amputation.

It is also a major risk factor for impotence, stroke, heart disease and premature death.

Type 2 diabetes is also partly genetic, but people are at more risk if they are overweight, especially around the stomach, eat too much fat and exercise too little.



Ministry spokesman Dr Don Matheson said addressing the epidemic, which costs the Government over $170 million a year, was a priority.

A report commissioned by Diabetes New Zealand has predicted that dealing with Type 2 diabetes will take more than 12 per cent of public health spending by 2021 - compared with 2 per cent in 2000 - unless there is more emphasis on early diagnosis and prevention.

Yesterday's forecasts, which the ministry acknowledges are based on limited data, predict that 2100 adults will die from Type 2 diabetes in 2011, compared with an estimated 1500 in 1996.

The ministry says slowing the epidemic depends on improving nutrition and increasing physical activity in all population groups.

Dr Toomath said the prevalence of obesity was predicted to rise from 17 per cent of the population in 1996, to 29 per cent by 2011.

Citing a British Medical Journal article last year which revealed a doubling of obesity rates in children under 5, she said the New Zealand national children's nutrition survey was likely to show a similar trend.

"We've got to change society. I'm talking about legislation ... The general public just haven't got it yet."

nzherald.co.nz/health