Diabetes in African Americans

Diagnosed Diabetes By County - All Races

(via Boots and Sabers)

Black Population By County

From BlackHealthCare.com:

• In 1993, 1.3 million African Americans were known to have diabetes. This is almost three times the number of African Americans who were diagnosed with diabetes in 1963. The actual number of African Americans who have diabetes is probably more than twice the number diagnosed because previous research indicates that for every African American diagnosed with diabetes there is at least one undiagnosed case.
• For every white American who gets diabetes, 1.6 African Americans get diabetes.
• One in four black women, 55 years of age or older, has diabetes. (Among African Americans, women are more likely to
• Twenty-five percent of blacks between the ages of 65 and 74 have diabetes.
• African Americans with diabetes are more likely to develop diabetes complications and experience greater disability from the complications than white Americans with diabetes.

Researchers suggest that African Americans and recent African immigrants to America have inherited a "thrifty gene" from their African ancestors. Years ago, this gene enabled Africans, during "feast and famine" cycles, to use food energy more efficiently when food was scarce. Today, with fewer "feast and famine" cycles, the thrifty gene that developed for survival may instead make weight control more difficult. This genetic predisposition, along with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), often occurs together with the genetic tendency toward high blood pressure. ...

Diabetes was an uncommon cause of death among African Americans at the turn of the century. By 1993, however, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, death certificates listed diabetes as the fifth leading cause of death for African Americans aged 45 to 64, and the third leading cause of death for those aged 65 and older in 1990. Diabetes is more dangerous for African-American women, for whom it was the third leading cause of death for all ages in 1990. Diabetes death rates may actually be higher than these studies show for two reasons. First, diabetes might not have been diagnosed. Second, many doctors do not list diabetes as a cause of death, even when the person was known to have diabetes.

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[Thepoordiabetic]

I believe that the most important factor affecting the prevalence of diabetes in african americans happens to be enviromental. Diets got poorer in this time frame, Introduction of certain foods like pasta that are not staple in the African American diet. Access to high quality medical care and an increasingly sedimentary lifestyle, I will take those factors any day than the genetic pre desposition don't get me wrong genetics play a role as well just not as much as the environment.

[Tom McMahon]

That theory is interesting, but unprovable. Besides, didn't long-ago Europeans run into feast-and-famine cycles too?

The most interesting point to me is how much the maps coincide. But even there it's not 100%. For example, on the Diabetes Map notice the belt through Kentucky and West Virginia that's not on the Black Population Map.

[Mitch]

I had never read the hypothesis on why diabetes might affect black people more, so I thank you for this bit. Of course I'm diabetic, and not happy about it, but at least I found out soon enough so that I got treatment early.