March of the diabetics

Posted at 3:22 PM on December 6, 2010 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Health

Slate magazine has an utterly fascinating visual depiction of a developing health crisis in America: diabetes.

Here's the rate of diabetes in 2004

And just four years later, it looks like this:

Compared to the South, as you can see, Minnesota gets off pretty easy. But it's not too hard to see why diabetes is going to cost the U.S. over $3.4 trillion, by one estimate.

Type 2 diabetes can be prevented with a simple change in diet in many cases. But many people don't bother.

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Comments (6)

This is terrifying.

Posted by Joanna | December 6, 2010 4:01 PM

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I'm curious about the random spots of high cases along the Canadian border in Maine, North Dakota, and Montana... are the Canadians infecting us with their bacon??

Posted by Ben Chorn | December 6, 2010 4:17 PM

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I'm a little suspicious of any data that correlate that strongly to borders. Look at the 2004 map, where Missouri and Colorado are dramatically different from their neighbors. That makes me think that data collection is different in various states, not that Illinois is _better_ than Missouri.

(But I agree that there are some obvious trends there that overcome my suspicions!)

Posted by Chris | December 6, 2010 4:56 PM

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Spent several hours yesterday looking at diet and its effects on our health.. The charts I saw showed that the incidence of diabetes has tripled since 1980. To say that it is alarming would be an understatement given the adverse health associated with diabetes.

The elephant in the room that few like to talk about is that this epidemic coincides with the decades long push by Public Health officials to urge that fats be largely removed from our diets. The substituted calories are carbs.

Gary Taubes, an award winning science writer, has spent the last decade studying over 100 years of diet research. His conclusions can be found in his book "Good Calories Bad Calories."

Taubes' findings have turned the nutritional
world on its head. His arguments seem unanwerable. Our low fat - high carb diet is killing us.

Posted by Duke Powell | December 6, 2010 6:13 PM

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Notice the similariity between the above maps and poverty maps -- but specifically maps showing the locations of American Indian Reservations...

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/02/22/concentrations-of-rural-poverty/

Mark

Posted by Mark | December 8, 2010 8:31 AM

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Hi Bob,

Healthline recently launched an interactive data visualization that shows the correlation between diabetes, food deserts, and poverty: http://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes/rates

We encourage you to embed the visualization on your site and share it with friends, followers, and anyone else you believe would be interested.

Warm Regards,
Tracy

Posted by Tracy Rose | June 12, 2012 6:32 PM

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