Obesity
Most Americans love to eat, and eat too much. In fact, the Center for Disease Control released a report suggesting we are eating ourselves into obesity and increasing our risk for and the incidence of common degenerative diseases
For example, diabetes affected 11 million Americans in 1990. At the end of that decade, the number increased to 16 million. In other words, in 2000, 6% of all Americans sufered from diabetes, or an increase of 40% in only ten years.
Over that same period, the obesity rate increased from 12% to nearly 20%.
Diabetes is a disorder that happens when the the body’s cells can no longer take up glucose from the blood. That results in the body’s tissues wasting away as glucose-starved cells are forced to consume their own proteins. Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, blindness, and amputation in adults.
In the last decade alone, the 85% increase in diabetics suffer from type 2, or “adult-onset” diabetes. These individuals lack the ability to use the hormone insulin.
Our bodies create insulin after a meal to alert cells that higher levels of glucose are coming soon. The insulin signal is supposed to cause the cell to turn on its glucose-transporting machinery.
Individuals who suffer from type 2 diabetes have normal or even elevated levels of insulin in their blood, and normal insulin receptors, but for some reason the binding of insulin to their cell receptors does not turn on the glucose-transporting machinery like it is supposed to do.
