Half a billion people suffer from diabetes. Many do not know – Wel.nl

Nearly half a billion people worldwide suffer from diabetes. It turns out that more than half of them are not aware that they have the disease New research it is in The scalpel Figured out.

Researchers studied data from 680,000 people between the ages of 25 and 64 from 55 countries. 37,000 of them have diabetes. More than half of this group were not aware that they were sick. Nine out of ten patients with diabetes had type 2 diabetes, which results from an unhealthy lifestyle, especially weight gain.

In the past, diabetes was a problem mainly in the Western world, but due to changing eating patterns, the disease is increasingly starting to appear in Asia and Africa. “The number of diabetics is increasing dramatically everywhere,” said David Flood, a researcher at the University of Michigan. “80 percent of all patients live in low or middle income countries.”

There is a lot in the Netherlands 1.2 million people suffer from diabetes. 250,000 of them are not aware that they have the disease. Untreated diabetes triples the risk of a heart attack and increases the risk of strokes, kidney failure, and nervous system damage. Symptoms of diabetes include passing a lot of urine, feeling very thirsty, poor vision, and fatigue.