(Selected Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control)
"Statistics" has a justifiable reputation as "the dismal science." Whether you're looking at the stock market, your checkbook, or the food values of your favorite hamburger, everything looks worse in a column of numbers. These data are real. However, we KNOW the better job you do of controlling your diabetes, the less your risk of becoming one of these statistics.
Today, an estimated 17.0 million Americans have diabetes. 11.1 million of them have been diagnosed; 5.9 million do not know they have the condition. Men: 7.8 million, 8.3% of all men, and Women: 9.1 million, 8.9% of all women, have the condition.
By race: An estimated 11.4 million non-Hispanic whites, 7.8 percent, have diabetes. About 2.8 million non-Hispanic blacks, 13.0 percent, making them "about twice as likely to have diabetes as are non-Hispanic whites of the same age."
Native Americans (the tribes and Alaskan natives) fare worse: 105,000, about 15.1 percent nationally. But, there is a regional skew, with diabetes least common among Alaskans (5.3 percent) and highest among the tribes of the American Southwest (25.7 percent). More than 50 percent of adults of the Pima tribe have (type 2) diabetes.
Diabetics "had contact with their physicians" 143 million times (17.9 times per diabetic per year) in 1996, and saw the doctor (office visit) 64 million times, about eight times per diabetic per year. About 14 percent of all diabetics had a diabetes-related emergency room visit as well.
Diabetes costs Americans an estimated $98 billion a year, with $44 billion of that (paid to doctor, hospital, and pharmacist) in direct medical costs, about $4,000 per diabetic.
About 73 percent of adult diabetics either have high blood pressure or achieve normal blood pressure through use of prescription antihypertensive medications. The risk of stroke is two to four times higher among diabetics, and heart disease is the leading cause of diabetes-related deaths.
Diabetes is the leading cause of new blindness among adults aged 20-74 years old. Diabetic retinopathy causes from 12,000 to 24,000 new cases of blindness each year.
About 60 to 70 percent of diabetics have detectable neuropathy, nervous system damage, from the condition. The results can include: impaired sensation or pain in the feet or hands, slowed digestion of food in the stomach, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other problems. Severe forms of diabetic nerve disease are a major contributing cause of lower-extremity amputations. More than 60 percent of "non-traumatic" (which means it wasn't war or accident that removed the limb) amputations occur among diabetics.
Diabetes is the leading cause of ESRD, end stage renal disease, accounting for 43 percent of new cases. In 1999, 38,160 diabetics began treatment for ESRD, and 114,478 underwent dialysis or received a kidney transplant.
What is the lesson you should take from these numbers? Is it "gonna getcha?" No. Diabetes is serious; it must be addressed -- but if you do a good job of controlling yours, these numbers should remain, like all "good" statistics, about somebody else.