Health

Common Sense Health: The Other Pandemic That Keeps Killing

by W. Gifford-Jones, MD and Diana Gifford-Jones Views: 147

Want some good news about the current viral pandemic? Vaccines are taking effect across global populations and will eventually end this horrible nightmare. But we’ve yet to face, let alone resolve, the truly catastrophic health crisis plaguing humankind.

It’s a disease for which there are no vaccines. Worse still, it is a completely unnecessary health tragedy that will continue unabated to kill millions of people worldwide year after year. It’s called type 2 diabetes and the coronavirus has made it deadlier.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the U.S., one in ten North Americans has diabetes. And 40 percent or more of the people who died of COVID-19 had diabetes.

According to an analysis of CDC data, people aged 25 to 44 showed a sharp increase in diabetes deaths. And this included long-term medical complications prior to death.

Why has this occurred? Type 2 diabetes, the main culprit, is a lifestyle disease. The human pancreas that produces insulin becomes exhausted due to obesity from too many calories and inactivity. School closures and restrictions have added to the problem for children.

If you have friends with diabetes, ask how they spend the day checking their numbers. If blood sugar is too high or too low, adjustments are vitally needed. They have to check with a laboratory every few weeks to see if the numbers are right. And often they may need to add insulin to survive.

For these millions of diabetics, atherosclerosis (hardening of arteries) is their mortal enemy. This results in a decreased flow of oxygenated blood to all organs of the body. The later diabetes is diagnosed, the longer this lack of oxygenated blood triggers degenerative medical complications.

One of the most frightening complications is the experience of sudden pain in the toe and then the sight of it gradually become black. Such toes must be amputated and sometimes later the leg is lost to the disease as well. Another major complication is blindness or kidney failure requiring either renal dialysis or a kidney transplant. About 50 per cent of diabetics die of heart attack.

So far nothing has been able to stop the pandemic of type 2 diabetes. Although it is unpopular to say it squarely, the main problem is obesity.  The solution involves both a huge reversal in individual lifestyle choices and major systemic changes in the goods society produces, the way we build our communities, the economics of work and play, and more.  It has been said many times, jokingly, that due to high sugar content of some breakfast cereals, it would be safer to eat the box! And everyone should step on the bathroom scale every day, as scales never lie.

Motivating individuals to take responsibility amid all the system problems is not a popular prescription. But changing behaviours would do more good in a few months of diligent effort than the billions of dollars being pumped into drugs, surgery, and public relations campaigns.

Here’s the key point. It’s been said that wars are too important to be left to generals. The type 2 diabetes pandemic is too important to be left to doctors.

Let’s challenge the news media. Doctors need help in getting the message out that fighting type 2 diabetes is both a healthcare priority and a needed urgent fix to save our health care system from bankruptcy. Next week’s column will challenge media outlets to ask this vital question, “Is there any difference between the millions of North Americans who die of COVID-19 quickly, and those millions of people who are dying of diabetes slowly?

Part two of a six-part series. Sign-up at www.docgiff.com. For comments, contact-us@docgiff.com. Follow us on Instagram @docgiff and @diana_gifford_jones

Image by Jason Taix from Pixabay

Author: W. Gifford-Jones, MD and Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. Ken Walker (who writes under the pseudonym of Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD) is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million.

His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!”

Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation.  His hobby is trap shooting.

He is married to Susan and has four children and twelve grandchildren.

Diana MacKay writes in collaboration with her father under the pen name, Diana Gifford-Jones.  The daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy.  Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa.  She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health.

For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School.  She is also a graduate of Wellesley College.  She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy.

She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University.  She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

The weekly column by W. Gifford-Jones, MD has been published without interruption for 45 years.  The same no-nonsense tradition now continues in a father-daughter collaboration.

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