Diabetes Mellitus: A Population Health Problem

Topic: Endocrinology
Words: 627 Pages: 2
Table of Contents

Introduction

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a commonly widespread disease worldwide, and especially many cases can be observed in the USA. What makes it dangerous is that the number of people exposed to the DM keeps getting bigger. Moreover, it causes other major health problems and increases the all-cause mortality rate. For example, according to Gamboa, Colantonio, Brown, Carson, and Safford (2017), “the individuals with diabetes mellitus are at high risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), and when they experience a clinical CHD event, they have a worse prognosis than individuals without diabetes mellitus.” There are several more consequences and dangerous outcomes for health, and the population of the USA might not realize the seriousness of the appearance of diabetes mellitus.

Person

The correction in the person’s lifestyle can improve the situation and help deal with diabetes, leading to the thought that the initial way of living might be the root of the diseases for some people. In the capitalistic era, people seemed to be tempted by the endless amount of easy food with flavor enhancers, especially when the restaurant business is flourishing and people have access to various cheap and affordable meals. In addition, nowadays, manufacturers tend to push people into consuming so-called sugar-free or healthy food but replicate it with other ingredients that might increase the level of glucose in the blood. Therefore, the amount of population suffering from diabetes is significant, and the undiagnosed amount keeps growing.

Place

Due to the historical events, The United States of America became a mix of different cultures and nations. Therefore, it influenced the development and spreading of diabetes mellitus. The most suffers from it the minorities of the society such as “African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, American Indians, and some Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are at particularly high risk for the development of type 2 diabetes” as Healthy People 2020 (2020) states. Thus, the minority of the population can struggle with access to medical help and might not fully understand the dangerous situation they are in. The case is even worse because people diagnosed with diabetes mellitus usually miss taking the medication. Vietri, Wlodarczyk, Lorenzo, Rajpathak (2016) claim about 30% of adult patients forget to get the dose, mostly not on purpose, which may also obstruct good well-being. Consequently, for some part of the American society can be problematic to deal with the issue.

Time

The person can be affected by diabetes because of lifestyle, genes, and pregnancy. However, many of them can be unaware of the health problems. According to the Healthy People 2020 (2020), “in the United States of America, about 28% of the population are undiagnosed with diabetes mellitus and another 86 million due to the high blood glucose level”. It is worth mentioning that pregnant people can also be affected by gestational diabetes, and the newborn child is most likely to get type 2 diabetes when they get older. The reasons for this can be “the maternal overweight and obesity, later age at childbearing, previous history of GDM, family history of type 2 diabetes mellitus and ethnicity are major GDM risk factors” according to McIntyre, Catalano, Zhang, et al. (2019). Thereby, the time of the modern generation determines the appearance of diabetes and a person-specific period of human life and its consequences.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the government has a lot of work to improve the healthcare system and prevent diabetes. It has many problems to deal with, for instance, help the minorities s for they struggle with the diseases more than others. Since many of them live in poverty, they can have issues getting medical help. In conclusion, diabetes Mellitus is a serious health problem that affects different aspects of human well-being and causes trouble for those who neglect it.

References

Gamboa, C. M., Colantonio, L. D., Brown, T. M., Carson, A. P., & Safford, M. M. (2017). Race‐sex differences in statin use and low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol control among people with diabetes mellitus in the reasons for geographic and racial differences in stroke study. Journal of the American Heart Association, 6(5), e004264.

Healthy People 2020. 2020 Topics & Objectives. Diabetes. 

McIntyre, H.D., Catalano, P., Zhang, C. et al. Gestational diabetes mellitus. Nat Rev Dis Primers 5, 47 (2019).

Vietri, J. T., Wlodarczyk, C. S., Lorenzo, R., & Rajpathak, S. (2016). Missed doses of oral antihyperglycemic medications in US adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus: prevalence and self-reported reasons. Current medical research and opinion, 32(9), 1519-1527.