I'm Sick & Tired of Reading....

I certainly thing SOME people get diabetes because of that ... but not all. I find myself looking at obviously overweight people and wondering whether or not THEY have diabetes.

I'm an adoptee and lived a very heathy life style. I found my birthfamily at 40 and was diagnosed with diabetes when I was 50. One of my birth brothers was diagnosed the same year. We share a grandmother who was a diabetic.

For us ... it's heredity!

I KNOW I have the diabetic build (also genetic) ... very much an "apple."

Valerie,

The people who write the articles you are referring to are the ones who are lazy. They didn't do their homework! The causes of the diabetes epidemic are multiple and some of them include improvements in medicine, the size of the snack industry, advertising, child predators and less money in schools for physical education programs.

1- People who used to die young are now living longer and diabetes is developing later in life.
2- When I was a child in the 50's a bag of potato chips meant a party was on the horizon. Dip was something that was made at home for special occasions. Soda was a huge treat. Breakfast was hot cereal. Fruit rollups and gummie vitamins would have been disdained as non-food items.
3- Starting with the sugar sweetened cereals in the 60's the food industry learned that television would entice people to want things that aren't healthy with visual images. It's kind of like the temptation of walking by a bakery with the smells and the window full of yummy things, except it's on your TV every six minutes!
4- Children used to be able to go outside and play from after school until the streetlights came on with only an occasional bathroom break at home or a friend's house. Children weren't disappearing in droves with their pictures plastered all over milk cartons. Parent's didn't fear for their children's lives by just sending them to the store for a loaf of bread. A child in a home playing a video game or with any other toys is a safe child in parent's minds. Less time outside means less exercise.
5- And there are fewer mandatory physical education programs in schools. With school districts strapped for cash just putting books in the kids hands and a teacher in front of them is sometimes difficult. Physical education programs are almost a luxury.

Add to this our labor saving devices like washing machines and dryers, self propelled vacuum cleaners, parking right outside every store in a strip mall, drive thru car washes, leaf blowing machines, snow blowers, power washers, dishwashers, electric and gas stoves, gas furnaces, well... you get my drift. These things aren't bad in and of themselves. It's just that we aren't moving much any more so we need to drastically cut down on our food intake. Our bodies don't know that we are going to be doing so much sitting and relaxing so they keep on preparing us for the work that used to be necessary to keep body and soul together.

History shows that only the very rich could get fat because they had everything done for them. The poor were very thin because they worked and moved from dawn to dusk. By making our machines our 'workers' we have made physical movement almost unnecessary. Our bodies are programmed to physically work to gain food and if we are to become healthy we either need to adjust our activity level or cut back on our food intake. Basically that's it in a nutshell. You didn't do this to you, modern civilization did this to you. Now you need to use your educated mind to reverse the trend in your life and become healthier.

Woo! Hoo! Weddings are my best thing! I'm a wedding cake designer and I produce two bridal shows every year. You go girl! And have fun with it, too. Oh.. and I have a really neat pattern for a bride's handkerchief that turns into a baby bonnet for a christening if you want it... (Jeannie goes off humming "Here comes the bride".)