By TJ Williams, DC, PhD
One out of every two of you have a deadly disease that’s making you fat and sick and will kill you and 90% of you don’t even know you have it. What’s worse is that your doctor isn’t trained how to find it and they’re not even looking for it. This problem will cost our country $3.5 trillion over the next ten years. It is bankrupting our economy. In 30 years 100% of our federal budget will be needed to pay for Medicare and Medicaid leaving nothing for education, defense, agriculture, roads, or even social security.
I’m talking about diabesity—the number one cause of obesity, heart disease, cancer, dementia, and of course type 2 diabetes. You might hear many terms used to describe this one basic phenomenon—a new epidemic of disordered biology and disease. It is the continuum of abnormal biology that ranges from milk insulin resistance to full-blown diabetes. We call it by many names: insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, syndrome x, adult-onset diabetes, and type 2 diabetes. In truth, these are ALL essentially one problem with varying degrees of severity. The diagnosis and treatment of the underlying causes that drive all of these conditions are actually the same. There is a more comprehensive term to describe these conditions: diabesity.
Diabesity describes a continuum of disease from optimal blood sugar balance to insulin sensitivity to full-blown diabetes. This biological imbalance is our modern plague. And yet, there are no national recommendations from the government or key organizations to advise screening and treatment of it and most doctors don’t know how to properly diagnose it. The result is that 90% of the people who suffer from diabesity are left undiagnosed and untreated.
The instances of diabesity are increasing at an astonishing rate. Twenty years ago, not a single state in the nation had an obesity rate over twenty percent. Today, not a single state in the nation has an obesity rate UNDER twenty percent! The prevalence of type 2 diabetes has tripled since the 1980’s. There are now over 27 million diabetics in this country and the number continues to rise.
So why is this happening? One of the main reasons is that conventional medicine seems to ignore the fundamental laws of biology, most importantly the continuum concept. There is a continuum from optimal health to hidden imbalance to serious dysfunction to disease. Anywhere along that continuum, we can intervene and reserve the process. The sooner we address it the better.
To effectively treat diabesity, we must shift our focus away from the symptoms or risk factors of the disease and begin taking a hard look at the causes. All of our attention is on treatments that lower blood sugar (diabetes drugs and insulin), lower blood pressure (anti-hypertensive drugs), lower cholesterol (statins), and thin blood (aspirin). But we never ask the most important questions: Why is your blood sugar, blood pressure, or blood cholesterol too high and why is your blood too sticky and likely to clot? Put another way: what are the root causes of diabesity? Answering this question is the focus of treatment in functional medicine.
If you would like more information regarding any of the treatments, therapies, or services offered at The Institute of Natural Health, please contact us at (314) 293-8123 or visit us at the theinstituteofnaturalhealth.com. Dr. TJ Williams is the Clinic Director for the Institute of Natural Health and the host of the radio program Wellness 101, which provides common-sense, science-based strategies for a healthy life. Wellness 101 airs Sundays at 2:00pm on FM NewsTalk 97.1.