In Time.com’s Wellness Blog, Tiffany O’Callaghan, discusses the urgent need to control diabetes treatment costs while they are still manageable. In 25 years, annual treatment costs will nearly triple from today’s staggering sum of $113 billion to roughly $336 billion in the U.S. alone, according to a recent estimate by researchers at the University of Chicago. This cost increase results from the number of Americans with diabetes almost doubling from 23.7 to 44.1 million. Both Type I (an auto-immune disease) which is incurable and Type II (adult onset) diabetes which can be managed and overcome with exercise and weight loss are included in the total.
Prior estimates, though considered "conservative", drastically underestimated the magnitude of the problem. For example, 1991 figures projected that 11.6 million people would be diabetic by 2030 which is less than half the total with diabetes today.
As a nation, we must join together to curb the cost of treating diabetes by finding practical systems to completely revamp our eating and exercise habits through therapeutic lifestyle changes.
Read the article by clicking the link below.
http://wellness.blogs.time.com/2009/11/27/diabetes-expected-to-double-costs-to-triple-by-2034/
