Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions around the world,¹ with China emerging as the “epicenter” of rising prevalence.

Last year, data² from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that more than one-third of all Americans³ are prediabetic, yet nine out of 10 of them don’t know they have it.

At that time, more than 29 million Americans were diagnosed with full-blown type 2 diabetes⁴ — a statistic researchers predicted in 2001 wouldn’t be reached until 2050!⁵ All told, one-third of Americans (115 million) were either prediabetic or diabetic.

Now, research^6,7,8,9,10 published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on September 8, 2015, suggests nearly HALF of all American adults had either diabetes or prediabetes in 2011 to 2012.

The situation is similarly dire in the UK, where diabetes rates have soared 60 percent in the last decade, rising from 2.1 million in 2005 to 3.3 million in 2015 — a rise that threatens to bankrupt the British National Health Service (NHS).¹¹

Reported Diabetes Prevalence and the Fight to Expand Medicaid

According to the latest statistics, about 38 percent of US adults have prediabetes which, if left unaddressed, sets you squarely on the path of not just type 2 diabetes but many other chronic diseases as well, including heart disease.

Another 12 to 14 percent have type 2 diabetes, which is associated with a number of health complications, including nerve damage (neuropathy), soft tissue infections, poor wound healing, and limb amputations.

In the UK, diabetes is responsible for 135 foot amputations each week.¹² Diabetic women under the age of 45 also have a six-fold greater risk for heart attack, recent research shows.¹³

Meanwhile, high blood pressure carried a four-fold increased risk for heart attack, and smoking raised it by 1.6 times. Consider that for a moment… diabetes turns out to be a FAR more potent risk factor for heart attack thansmoking!

However, it’s interesting to note that the sudden jump from one-third to one-half of Americans being either prediabetic or diabetic appears to be due to a manipulation of the numbers to show more people having diabetes…

The authors even admit they “may” have counted people as having diabetes who really don’t, and they don’t how many of those numbers they’ve miscounted. Why would they do that, you ask?

It could be related to hitting 2020 “Healthy People” goals by forcing states to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.

At present, about half of all US states have refused to do so, citing costs, and this study could be used as fodder to either impel them to expand coverage, or convince Congress to rewrite the law in such a way that the states will be forced to fall in line.

Estimates and Misclassification May Account for Some of the Reported Increases

The new study citing half of people in the US having either prediabetes or diabetes includes minority groups for which prevalence is being “estimated” for the first time ever.¹⁴ They also explain that in this study, “some participants without diabetes may have been misclassified as having diabetes.”

The reason for this misclassification, they admit, is due to not following the American Diabetes Association’s protocol for diagnosing diabetes for the purposes of this study.

William Herman, who wrote an editorial¹⁵ to the featured study, also authored a March 2015 article¹⁶ criticizing states that haven’t opened the doors to increased Medicaid.

In that article, he notes that “in states that expanded Medicaid, more people were diagnosed with diabetes at an earlier stage of the disease,” and clearly, early diagnosis is important. Insulin resistance and prediabetes are easily reversible with the appropriate lifestyle changes.

Even type 2 diabetes is typically 100 percent reversible through diet, intermittent fasting, and exercise, but may require you to be far stricter than had you started at the first signs of insulin resistance.

Medicaid Expansion Led to Significant Increase in Diabetes Diagnosis, but Not Improved Health…

However, while expanded Medicaid coverage may lead to more people getting tested for diabetes, the jury is out on whether having insurance will actually improve health. This isn’t surprising, considering that conventional medicine doesn’t address the root causes of diabetes.

The Oregon Study, ¹⁷ published in 2013, looked at the effect of Medicaid on clinical outcomes versus having no insurance. The study found there was “a statistically significant increase in the diagnosis of diabetes and the use of diabetes medications” with the expansion of Medicaid.

The New York Times¹⁸ did a story on this in March, explaining that with Medicaid expansion, “the number of Medicaid enrollees with newly identified diabetes rose by 23 percent … [compared to] 0.4 percent in states that did not expand Medicaid.”

However, despite the increased diagnosis of diabetes and use of drugs, the health of these patients did NOT improve, and no change in mortality was observed, which effectively put the brakes on Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid.^19,20

So, the latest study suggesting diabetes and prediabetes is now at 50 percent among Americans may simply be a way to strong-arm states that haven’t expanded Medicaid to do so, immediately, through public pressure and dedicated advocacy.

In my view, the fact that patients’ health did not improve despite diagnosis and treatment simply proves that conventional approaches to diabetes are seriously misguided.

As a colleague of mine, Dr. Ron Rosedale, used to say: doctors cause diabetics to D.I.E. from their flawed prescriptions, which stem from a basic lack of insight into the root cause of this disease. D.I.E., here, is a clever acronym for “Doctor Induced Exacerbation,” which does indeed include early death.

Have You Checked Yourself for Diabetes?

Be that as it may, it’s quite clear that diabetes and insulin resistance is on the rise, and there’s no doubt that it takes an enormous toll on people’s health (the Oregon study actually confirms both of these statements), sending health care costs skyward over the long term. In 2012, diabetes in the US came with a price tag of $245 billion²¹ after health care costs and lost productivity were calculated.

Part of the answer is diagnosis. If you have no idea that you’re in the danger zone, you’re far less likely to consider doing what it takes to correct it, and you’re more likely to suffer complications as the disease progresses.

Unfortunately, while diagnosis rates have improved, it’s estimated that more than one-third of American type 2 diabetics are still undiagnosed.²² Among Hispanics and Asians that rate may be even higher, with perhaps more than half of cases going undetected.^23,24 Anyone can get type 2 diabetes and, except for gestational diabetes, it’s a gradual process that evolves over a long period of time as it moves from a state of “impaired glucose tolerance” to full-blown diabetes.

If you are insulin-resistant, it means that glucose (sugar) is building up in your blood and causing damage, because your body is not using its insulin effectively. This in turn starves your fat, muscle, and liver cells, which causes your body to signal the pancreas to make more insulin in an attempt to make up for what those cells aren’t getting. It quickly becomes a vicious cycle that can lead to prediabetes and, ultimately, diabetes.

Prediabetes is a term used to describe a state of progressing insulin resistance, in which your blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not quite high enough to actually be called diabetes. You may be diagnosed with prediabetes if your fasting glucose numbers are between 100 and 125. Having prediabetes is a strong risk factor that you will get type 2 diabetes in the future. Risk factors²⁵ that can trigger prediabetes and eventually contribute to your becoming diabetic include the following:

• Age 45 or older
• Overweight or obese
• Family history of diabetes
• Hypertension
• Physical inactivity
• Depression
• History of gestational diabetes
• Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease
• HDL-C levels under 35mg/dL
• Fasting triglycerides over 250 mg/dL
• Treatment with atypical antipsychotics, glucocorticoids
• Obstructive sleep apnea and chronic sleep deprivation
• Certain health conditions associated with insulin resistance
• Member of high-risk population (African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native, or Asian American)
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