That’s right, a whole month dedicated to Diabetes Awareness. Did you know that by the end of today, 4,300 people in the United States will be diagnosed with diabetes? As I wrote about last week, the USA Today reported on 10/22/10 that the number of diabetes cases in the US will double, and perhaps triple by 2050. As many as one in three will have the disease!
On Friday, I picked up a great book at the library entitled Diabetes Rising, written by Dan Hurley. Although I’m still reading the book, so far Hurley has done a masterful job at tracing the history of this disease, once very rare, now, sadly, very common.
The first written reference of diabetes comes from an Egyptian medical text known as the Ebers Papyrus,written in the year 1536 B.C. Diabetes cases remained rare until the 1920’s, when doctors began to notice an alarming rise of this chronic illness. Without a doubt, those doctors back then could have never predicted the levels that presently exist.