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Diabetes
Thanks to Americans' love affair with high-fat, high-cholesterol diets, obesity has grown to epidemic proportions-and with it, diabetes. Seventeen million Americans have diabetes, and more than 200,000 people die each year from diabetes-related causes. The vast majority of diabetics-90 to 95 percent-suffer from type 2 or "adult-onset" diabetes, which is linked to obesity and inactivity. Type 2 diabetes usually appears after age 40, although it is now starting to be found among teens and children. Diabetes increases a person's risk of heart disease, strokes, blindness, kidney failure, and pneumonia. It can also lead to nerve damage and poor circulation in the feet and legs, which can necessitate amputations.
While there is no cure for diabetes, the good news is that diabetes can be prevented, and even more remarkably, symptoms can be reversed. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) should be at the forefront of preventing diabetes. Instead, this bloated charity―which netted $188 million in total revenues in 2002 and whose CEO took home more than $430,000 in the same year―is turning a blind eye to the cutting edge of knowledge on diabetes. Recommending a diet that is way too high in fat, cholesterol, and protein and too low in complex carbohydrates, the ADA fails to inform its own constituents-men, women, and children who are sick and suffering with diabetes-of the most powerful tools available to them to take control of their own health. The ADA also funds cruel, go-nowhere experiments on animals when its resources would be far better spent on aggressive diabetes education and prevention programs.
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