More than 100,000 Americans have died from diabetes for the second year in a row, Reuters reported. The surge in deaths was partly due to missed treatment and diagnosis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to experts.
“The large number of diabetes deaths for a second year in a row is certainly a cause for alarm,” Dr. Paul Hsu, an epidemiologist at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, told Reuters. “Type 2 diabetes itself is relatively preventable, so it’s even more tragic that so many deaths are occurring.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also noted that in 2019, diabetes caused deaths was approximately 87,000 in the United States, but have since risen steadily:
Since then, the nation’s toll from diabetes has increased sharply, surpassing 100,000 deaths in each of the last two years and representing a new record-high level, according to a Reuters analysis of provisional death data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Diabetes-related deaths surged 17% in 2020 and 15% in 2021 compared to the prepandemic level in 2019. That excluded deaths directly attributed to COVID-19. The CDC concurred with the Reuters analysis and said additional deaths from 2021 are still being tallied.
Accordingly, a federal panel recently noted that the diabetes amongst American adults has “increased from 5.3% in the late 1970s to 14.3% in 2018.”
Democratic senators have capitalized on the increase in diabetes, arguing that the prevalence of the disease is all the more reason to pass the Build Back Better plan (BBB). Part of President Joe Biden’s BBB plan would cap insulin at $35. However, the Biden administration previously rescinded a Trump-era Health and Human Services rule that similarly lowered insulin costs. The agency partly cited “high administration costs” as to why Trump’s insulin rule could not go into effect.
Now, under Biden, the National Clinical Care Commission created by Congress stated that diabetes “cannot simply be viewed as a medical or health care problem, but also must be addressed as a societal problem that cuts across many sectors, including food, housing, commerce, transportation and the environment,” according a report given to Congress and HHS by the commission.
Additionally, recent research indicated that for those with type two diabetes, adding intermittent fasting and low carb diets could “eradicate” the disease, The New York Post reported:
Experts have now found intermittent fasting could help control and even eradicate type 2 diabetes.
This type of eating has soared in popularity because it is considered less difficult than constantly watching what you eat.
Rather, it just requires motivation to avoid food for a period of time, for example between 6pm and noon the next day.
Intermittent fasting is also touted as improving health, such as blood pressure and cholesterol.
It’s because of the so-called ease of the diet that experts say intermittent fasting could work for people with type 2 diabetes.
The National Clinical Care Commission recommended that Congress “create an Office of National Diabetes Policy that would coordinate efforts across the government and oversee changes outside health policy.” Reuters reported that the commission chairman, Dr. William Herman, suggested it “would be separate from HHS and could be similar to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.”
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