A growth that is of the bad kind

My cousin-in-law, who was born and raised in the US, often comments that India is the only country where he has seen signs and posters advertising the services of diabetologists.  Even freakier for him: Centers that specialize in diabetes care.

It might shock him even more if he were to read this NY Times report on diabetes in India.  In short, we ain't seen nothin' yet!

The International Diabetes Federation projects that the number of Indians with diabetes will soar to 123 million by 2040 as diets rich in carbohydrates and fat spread to less affluent rural areas.

During my childhood, diabetes was referred to as a rich person's disease.  Because, only those who were affluent could afford to eat the wrong foods and then sit and do nothing.  The poor, on the other hand, barely had anything to eat and were constantly physically working in order to earn that meager food. Now, the country is immensely more prosperous than when I was a kid.  Which means, yes, if the old habits continued, then the country is headed towards a diabetic explosion!

Dr. Yajnik said he believes Indians’ susceptibility to diabetes may have emerged as their diets changed with rising affluence — and that their bodies, attuned to scarcity, couldn’t handle an overload of food.

The overload has been almost instantaneous, in the larger temporal context.

So, how is this overload beginning to show up even before the arrival of diabetes?

Since 1990, the percent of children and adults in India who are overweight or obese has almost tripled to 18.8 percent from 6.4 percent, according to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

Interesting coincidence, if you think about it. India opened up its economy to the world in 1991.  Junk food was among other goods that came in.

One does not have to look fat or obese in order to have diabetes.  They can be relatively thin too.  But, there is a big symptom that typically juts out: The fat that collects around the abdomen.  The spare tire.

In my boring regimented life, when people ask me for suggestions, I tell them it is a question of healthy calories in versus calories out.  Mere reduction in intake won't help--the calories out depends on physical activity.  Which is what a cousin in the extended family found out.  After years of reducing his intake alone and getting frustrated that he still continued to gain weight, he took up running and exercising.  Within months he lost quite some pounds.  And he continued with that and built up the success.  So successful that he was profiled in the newspaper a few months ago.  "You should see him now," his mother gloated a few days ago.

Life is a procession of “frustrations and irritations”.  The best we can do is to at least do our part to make sure that it is a short procession!  So, get up and do twenty push-ups in order to reduce that abdominal fat that you have been fondly rubbing while reading through this post! ;)

Pills will replace exercising: eat all you want :-)

No, this is not from The Onion. And it is no April First joke either.
This is from the Scientific American. Yes, that is right. I suppose this means that we can eat the cheesecake and have it too. Excerpt:

Scientists have found a drug that mimics the effects of a workout by, among other things, increasing the body's ability to burn fat.The study shows the pill can also increase endurance; lab mice that took it ran more than 40 percent longer on a treadmill than their untreated peers."It's tricking the muscle into 'believing' it's been exercised daily," says Ronald Evans, a developmental biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, Calif., and co-author of a study published in Cell. "It proves you can have a pharmacologic equivalent to exercise."