Today, the New York Times published journalist N.R. Kleinfeld’s second powerful article in its four-part series on the terrible epidemic of diabetes.
This piece focuses on East Harlem, a New York City neighborhood that’s been devastated by diabetes. The article is chock-full of sad, cautionary tales about the perils of a high-sugar diet that anyone, anywhere would do well to heed.
According to Kleinfeld’s story, East Harlem residents die of diabetes twice as much as people in the city as a whole. There are more diabetes-related hospitalizations of East Harlem residents than in any other section of New York. It has the city’s largest percentage of obese people. Amputations due to diabetes are more frequent there than in any other New York neigborhood.
Medical professionals think several factors are responsible for the prevalence of diabetes in East Harlem, according to the Times article. Ninety % of its residents are black and Hispanic, and some experts believe those groups have a genetic predisposition to the disease. It also has a high rate of poverty, and too many East Harlem residents lack access to good medical care and healthful food choices.
For example, the Times piece cites a Mt. Sinai hospital study, which found that stores on the Upper East Side, an affluent neighborhood immediately to the south of East Harlem, are more than three times as likely to stock fresh fruit and veggies, low or fat-free milk, high-fiber bread, and diet soda than stores in East Harlem. Too many people struggle to afford their diabetes drugs, and so skip them or take only partial doses. Poor eating habits also play a huge role, at least with most of the people profiled in the piece.
Just how poorly some of the people interviewed ate–and sadly, continue to eat–after being diagnosed with diabetes, is astounding. A 57-year-old diabetic named Juan Concepcion told Kleinfeld:
"I’m trying to give up beer. I would drink at 7 at night until 3 in the morning, watched boxing and baseball, drinking beer. I drank 15 or 20 beers in a night."
Another diabetic, Elsie Matos, told the reporter:
"Listen, if I want to eat a piece of cake, I’m going to eat it. No doctor can tell me what to eat. I’m going to eat it, because I’m hungry. We got too much to worry about. We got to worry about tomorrow. We got to worry about the rent. We got to worry about our jobs. I’m not going to worry about a piece of cake."
"Doctors had been hectoring her for years, saying that if she didn’t lose weight she was going to end up with diabetes. But she didn’t feel sick. She wasn’t worried about what might happen at 40. She was a teenager, with teenage hauteur, living in the now."Again she was told to diet. Her mother said Xiomariz was `on the see-food diet – every food she sees, she eats.’ Her mother felt frustrated: ‘I want her to go live with her father and have him knock some sense into her – literally.’ He, too, had diabetes.
"Xiomariz didn’t mind her weight. `I feel my weight makes me look like me,’ she said. `So I don’t have to look like those skinny people.’
"Not long after starting, in fact, she quit the gym – too much time and too much money.
"She didn’t comprehend the terror of the disease. `I know you can’t pass it like kissing someone or something,’ she said.
"Some mornings, rushing, she neglected to take her pills. She had stopped checking her sugar. She said she had lost the meter.
"Was she worried about her diabetes?
"She moved her head from side to side. `Sometimes I forget I have it," she said. "It’s not that big a deal.’
"What other disease would she compare diabetes to? She thought a moment, and found the answer. She said, `A cold.’
A disease that, if not carefully controlled, can lead to kidney failure, loss of limbs, blindness, heart disease, and premature death, likened in severity to a cold. Disheartening doesn’t come close to describing this article and the sentiments those interviewed expressed.
But despite this depressing article, there is hope. People do have the power to reduce their risk of contracting diabetes by dramatically reducing or eliminating sugar from their diets, by exercising, by closely monitoring their blood sugar levels and by taking their medication at appropriate times.
I sincerely hope that this story and the others in this series will spur people to take action, and kudos to The New York Times for publishing it and to reporter Kleinfeld’s spectacular reporting and coverage of this important topic.
Note from Connie: Since I’m completey consumed with efforts to coordinate and implement my Fast-Track, Kick-Sugar Countdown Program, my assistant Jennifer Moore wrote this piece.
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