Blog 1: Diabetes In China becoming a problem?

In the more recent years, I’ve heard more and more about China and the growing epidemic of diabetes. The article discusses how before 1980 obesity was not commonplace at all; in fact it was less than one percent.  Currently, the obesity rate in China has surpassed the U.S.; our rate is 11.3 and China’s is at 11.6 percent.  The common themes I want to get across in my blogs are the issues with health all around the world and how it is affecting people. Obesity can lead to heart failure as well as death and also diabetes. According to this article, “ The total — 114 million people — means China has about a third of the world’s diabetes sufferers, who are at greater risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney failure.” The concern here is for public health systems, the article discusses the strain that will be placed on China due to these unhealthy eating habits.

   There have been solutions offered, many Chinese who can afford it to send their children to a “fat camp” to lose the weight, but not everyone can afford this.  Also, possible reasons for the obesity in the Chinese could be as listed in the article part of the one child policy for example, “families who spoil the one child that most are allowed to have." I found interestingly enough industrialization was blamed in this article for the different lifestyles and partly to do with globalization, the spreading of western ideas. China now has access to western diets which are higher in caloric intake and access to vehicles which causes them to bicycle and walk less. Also, their sedentary work environments in factories have caused the Chinese people to become less active.  Asians are biologically different than Caucasians and African Americans and can have diabetes at lower BMI’s. The best thing to do in countries like China is to raise awareness of these factors to the public.  All the things we've studied so far has to some extent changed the way China is living and overall affected the health of China.

Emily vestrat
9/10/13
4:40 pm 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/health/diabetes-epidemic-grows-in-china.html?ref=health