Danger of diabetes

Sri Lankans in general are simply not fully aware of the dangers arising from ‘Insulin Resistance’, popularly known as diabetes. We hear odd references to diabetes causing kidney failure, heart attacks, and stroke (brain damage). But we hear less mention of gangrene, blindness, Alzheimer’s disease, Limb amputation, depression and so on. Added to this is the damage done to us due to uric acid which doctors now attribute to weight gain, diabetes, dementia and consciousness fog in their patients.

This amounts to a formidable list of complaints caused by the goodies we love: sugar, sweets and carbohydrate consumption.

Hospital authorities do not reveal how many patients die under their care every day. An approximation may be as many as 90 people die each day in total from carbohydrate consumption in Sri Lanka. That is about, approx. 32,000 Sri Lankans die each year just to keep the sugar industry, the baking industry, and the medical importers and distributors in business.

You may realise that we (sugar eaters) are all in the sugar trap. It is a slow descent, a slow conveyor belt taking us to insulin resistance with medical practitioners serving us at every stage of disability, attempting to reduce the effects of the poison (at a price). But the poison wins us over in the end.

See how children’s food is charged with sugar. It seems the only way to entice young people to eat is to lure them with sugar, honey, jam, chocolate and jaggery and so on.

And, there is little emphasis on exercise, keeping fit, gymnastics and so many children become unhealthy and even overweight with little outlet for their excess energy in exercising, gymnastics, walking etc. With the matter of feeding our children, perhaps we have the cart before the horse, children need to express hunger before we ply them with not fancy foods, but down to earth, healthy foods.

Sugar is addictive. Notice how a cup of sweet tea will initiate cravings for more sweet things to eat. Craving arises due to addiction. Then you see the trap sugar has made for us.

People’s ignorance is costing them their lives, but there is no-one on the merry-go-round of sugar addiction to warn them to jump off~!

We have to learn new ways of making simple foods attractive, without sugar and carbohydrates.

It is the poor Buddhists taking the brunt of this death toll, especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder. They ignore the warnings to avoid sweet things and to eat a wide range of simple foods.

Priyantha Hettige