Bengaluru, Nov 14: Diabetes, which used to be a disease of the elderly, is growing at an alarming rate among the younger generation. Diabetologists in the city are seeing patients as young as 13 and 14 years old.
About a decade ago, Type 2 diabetes, which results from the body’s ineffective use of insulin, used to affect the 40-plus age group, but now the number of children and young adolescents below 20 years who are affected is increasing. Type 1 diabetes, characterised by deficient insulin production, is also growing for unknown reasons, says Dr Narashima Shetty, director of the Karnataka Institute of DiÂabetology (KID). The institute gets about 10-15 paediatric diabetes cases on an average every day.
The government-run KID gets around a very large number of new patients every day with symptomatic diabetes complaints. Says Dr Shetty, “Almost every day we get not less than 150 new cases. The load of patients has increased twofold in the past two years. On any given day we have about 40 diabetologists attending to the patients, but still we have to tell about 20-30 patients to come the next day.” Sedentary lifestyle, long hours of inactivity, lack of physical exercise, increased intake of processed and fast food, are among the major causes of obesity among the young. “This leads young kids to develop Type 2 diabetes. Parents should send their children for regular physical exercise and check what they eat before it gets too late and they become chronically diabetic,” advises Dr Shetty.
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Dr Rajeshwari Janakiraman, consultant endocrinologist and diabetologist at Columbia Asia Hospital agrees that the rising number of Type 2 diabetes among the younger generation is worrying. “For the past four or five years we are seeing very young diabetic patients. It is surprising that some are just 14-15 years old. Most of these teenagers are obese and on examination they are diagnosed with high cholesterol.”
Dr Janakiraman too blames an inactive lifestyle and bad eating habits. “Lifestyle changes with an increase in physical activity needs to be brought about immediately.”
