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Testing Our Patients/ce...

The US Preventive Services Task Force just recommended that people get tested for diabetes at a younger age: 35. Early detection will help prevent complications from untreated diabetes. “The lowered recommended age for screening ‘has really been driven by the obesity epidemic—greater rates of obesity in young people.’” (WSJ, 3/16/2021) If this preliminary draft recommendation is approved, many insurers will provide this testing for free.

Actually, with about 20% of teens estimated to have prediabetes & 10% with severe obesity already, & 1/3 lower-income kids & children of color headed for diabetes, testing should start much earlier for at-risk young adults--perhaps @25 years old.

The more I think about these statistics, the angrier I get.

We should have declared a national child health emergency in the late 1970s, when the child obesity epidemic began. If those kids had been upper-income white children, we would have dealt with it much sooner. Yet in spite of some important steps during the Obama administration, given the scale & extreme danger of epidemic inactivity & unhealty nutrition from birth--we have done very little.

We are not acting with anywhere near the urgency merited. We need much greater awareness, attention & investment, in order to move the needle on unhealthy habits. Instead, we are moving in ultra-slow motion.

This earlier testing will actually be a confession of how badly we have failed to protect young people's health. Americans are getting diabetes ever-younger. So we need to detect it early to prevent complications--when actually we should be preventing inactivity & unhealthy nutrition in the first place!

Time for less patience...in order to eventually have less patients needing treatment!



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