Doctors seldom report diabetes as a cause of death on a death certificate.
Instead, they usually record the most direct cause of death, like heart failure or kidney failure, even if diabetes happens to be the cause of these.
So researchers in Boston set out to determine the actual number of people who die as a direct result of having type two diabetes – and not just heart failure or other secondary causes.
And what they discovered was frankly terrifying!
They examined the detailed medical records of people who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and in the National Health Interview Survey.
They then compared the diabetics in these databases with the nondiabetics to calculate the mortality percentage for each group.
It turned out that diabetics were an alarming 90% more likely to die than nondiabetics.
They also found a staggering 12% of American deaths are due to diabetes.
This puts diabetes only behind cardiovascular disease and cancer as causes of death.
Up to now, estimates of the contribution of diabetes to annual deaths have been much lower, probably because diabetes used to be a lot less common in the population than it is now.
By 2050, a full 1 out of every 3 Americans will be diabetic if things don’t change.
If you are starting to feel panicky, all this is meant to be scary.