Posted on 11/13/2006 9:19:04 PM PST by Brian Allen
Escalating rates of diabetes among indigenous cultures could make the Maori and Polynesian races "extinct" before the end of the century, an Australian expert warns.
Professor Paul Zimmet, director of Monash University's International Diabetes Institute, said the rising number of diabetes victims among the world's indigenous communities would decimate entire cultures. "Without urgent action there certainly is a real risk major wipings out of indigenous communities, if not total extinction, within this century," he said.
"Life expectancy is already low and dropping, diabetes is hitting them very hard and the infections, amputations and kidney disease will just wreak more havoc."
Professor Zimmet labeled rising world diabetes rates – with the disease affecting one in four "indigenous" adults – a tragedy threatening to consume world economies and bankrupt "health systems."
Extinction was a "very real reality" and Australia's Aborigines were just as much at risk as Maori and Pacific Island populations and native peoples in the United States and Canada, he said. Professor Zimmet will discuss his findings at a Diabetes in "Indigenous People" Forum, which opened in Melbourne yesterday.
The claims have split experts in New Zealand. Professor Chris Cunningham, of Massey's Research Centre for Maori Health, agreed with Professor Zimmet's dire prediction, describing diabetes among Maori as being at "epidemic proportions".
Little research and screening had been carried out into the disease's prevalence among Maori and Pacific Island populations, but Professor Cunningham suspected well over half of those with diabetes did not know they had the disease.
Professor Cunningham said Maori and Pacific islanders were more susceptible to diabetes as they were not physiologically accustomed to the Western lifestyle and diet.
"The reality is a Big Mac hurts Maori more than it hurts Caucasians."
The onset of type-2 diabetes is generally triggered by obesity.
Though it usually strikes in adulthood, increasing numbers of teenagers and children are developing the disease.
Health Ministry figures show type-2 diabetes is thought to account for 20 per cent of deaths among Maori, compared with 4 per cent for non-Polynesian New Zealanders.
Maori males are 61/2 times more likely and Maori females 10 times more likely to die from diabetes than non-Polynesian people, while Pacific peoples are five times more likely to die from diagnosed diabetes than non-Polynesians.
Porirua's Ora Toa health unit manager, Charlene Williams, who is from a family with a history of diabetes, did not believe Maori would become extinct.
"They've said this about us before and we're still here." Most Maori with diabetes developed it later in life, after they had children.
Fight the Obesity Epidemic spokeswoman Robyn Toomath, a Wellington Hospital endocrinologist, said Maori and Pacific Islanders were genetically more susceptible to obesity and therefore to developing diabetes. But the waistline of all New Zealanders was expanding.
Health Ministry chief clinical adviser Sandy Dawson said the Government paid close attention to addressing the disparity in ethnic rates of diabetes.
Diagnosing diabetes early is a specific priority for the Ministry of Health, District Health Boards and Primary Health Organizations.
Last year an estimated 125,000 people were diagnosed as diabetic. Twenty two per cent of them were Maoris.
<< Exactly the same dire process as Canada has inflicted on natives and whites alike.
The "public servants" and native leaders are the "Judas goats" of socialism - leading entire populations to their doom. >>
Appreciate the Canadian situation very well, also. Went to college in New Brunswick and have had commercial and business interests, mostly in BC -- and a place up there -- for almost forty years. I thus don't merely "feel Canadians' pain" but, especially through the traitor, Trudeau's, times and through those of his heirs and successors, have also lived it. Eh?
Best ones - B A
We were told when we visited NZ that illegal drugs was wiping the Maoris out.
I've heard that it's showing up in young people these days; in their 20's. The one article I read on it, and if I can recall where it was I'll see about looking it up, was done by someone who looked at different groups of people. One thing he noticed is that the Amish, who eat a pretty much typical Western diet, have a very low type 2 diabetes rate. Along with that, he noticed that you NEVER (according to him) see a fat Amish child. He suspected that there was some correlation between childhood obesity and early onset of Type 2 diabetes. He also thought their much more active lifestyle helped fight it.
<< We were told when we visited NZ that illegal drugs was wiping the Maoris out. >>
When I was growing up the booze was doing a not too shabby job of that, too.
To have lived through this humiliating era has been a revelation to me. From what was arguably the most free country in the world we descended into a dreary faux-European "social democracy", with the added excrescence of a new nationalism fostered by Liberal Party interest.
We desperately need the Tories to form a majority government, and then make it Job #1 to horse-whip Liberal appointees through the streets.
I suppose I'll settle for firings. ;^)
<< To have lived through this humiliating era has been a revelation to me .... >>
Me too.
And since we are talking about a humiliating era: Born a British "subject," and as proud as a young man could be of the sea of red on every world map and that "the sun never set on the British Empire," I've spent my life in Aerospace/Aeronautics/Aviation and have traveled the equivalent of upwards of 700 times around the Earth.
And although, thank God, now an American, what is worse for me than the faux Euro-peon socialist "democracies" into which both once great now grovelling Britain and its every former colony (With the marked exception of, since 1942 America-oriented, Australia) has degenerated, is, everywhere I've ever traveled and travel still, the attitude of the pathetically pontificating faux Euro-peon pukes and crapheads who haven't seen and cannot see the mess they've made and and who blissfully, every one of them a little legend in his own lunchtime Winston Jerome Churchill, a John G Diefenbaker, a Peter Fraser or even a "Kiwi Keith" Holyoake, both lord it over the bloody disasters they've created -- and talk down to the rest of us.
Where are the Plains Indians going to find buffalo? Which other humans should the Maori eat?
Buffalo is easy to get - you can buy it over the internet, not so sure about the other stuff....
They sell buffalo in the grocery stores here...
http://www.reasors.com/departments/meat/meat_buffalo.html
Thanks for the ping. I used to live in HI and the native Hawaiians and Samoans (what to speak of Tongans...) were often HUGE. I mean HUGE. And they were not healthy when they were huge.
Trying to get them to want to eat only their traditional diets would never work unless, say, civilization was destroyed. As it is, they often east some of their traditional foods with lots of other junk piled on.
But the white flour/hydrogenated fat/cottonseed oil/corn syrup/sugar in everything/etc diet is extremely unhealthy for everyone, as has been mentioned in the thread.
Looking at the problem from the Ayurvedic POV, Pacific Islanders mostly have a certain constituion or body type - Kapha - which is more susceptible to weight gain and certain diseases.
Any lifestyle which involves no physical work or exercise and consumption of junk food (which is what most or a lot of what is considered normal food) will necessarily lead to obesity and various illnesses in a lot of people. And we see that.
We were just talking the other night about how many fat kids there are nowadays. When we were kids there was usually one chubby kid in a class or a grade. Now they're everywhere. Could it be more junk food and less exercise? Duh? When I was a kid I hardly ever watched TV and spent as much time as I could outside climbing trees, hiking around in the woods, riding my bike, playing with neighborhood kids, etc. And I didn't have a spacre ounce on my body.
Then there is a sink or "sank" sandwich...so sloppy with tomatoes etc... you have to eat it over a sink.
,,, the gene pool takes care of itself.
God says, "assimilate or die."
Dawinist/eugenist/abortorium-operating secular socialists say, "there is no God."
And who has time to argue with a socialist?
That said, you can still get some of the best fry bread anywhere on the reservation!
Better watch out, the government's going to be coming after our frying pans next!
Liberalism!
Like my tagline says, Liberals Cost Lives!
Actually the Amish mostly grow their own food. They eat the typical dairy/butter/animal fat-rich diet our forefathers ate. To my knowledge they eat little or no modern junk food (canola, soy, white flour, etc). And they get plenty of exercise.
Sorry I'm so late to this thread: I'm a type I (developed at age 27) and my onset was almost identical to what you described: I got really heavy, then lost something like 75 lbs. It was ugly: I wouldn't wish ketoacidosis on anyone.
What I denied in my head I finally had to accept when I was getting up three times a night to urinate while drinking no less than six liters of water. Every night. When I finally went to the doc, my fasting bg was 880. I should have been dead.
Point being that, no, diet in and of itself doesn't cause the disease. It does, however, exacerbate efforts to control it and live a longer life. And predisposition to the disease is heavily genetic.
Great post. I have a Type I ping list, if anyone here wants to join up. Not a lot of volume.
They also said that our ancestors did huge amounts of exercise, both resistance and aerobic. One interesting thing about humans is that we have tremendous endurance, better than many other species. We perspire over the surface of our bodies, which many mammals do not do (they shed heat through their lungs by panting). The authors described a hunting technique of the Bushmen in the Kalahari: patiently chase a deer all day long until it is exhausted. The deer can run much faster than any human but the human can run all day long. Anyway, if you can find a copy of this book, it's worth reading.
???? Not any I've met. Even cross country runners have to stop some time during the day and if the deer can sprint fast enough for the human to lose it's trail, it doesn't matter in the end if the human can outrun it endurance wise.
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