10 Things You Might Not Know About Diabetes

1. About one third of all people with diabetes do not know they have the disease.
2. Type 2 diabetes often does not have any symptoms.
3. Only about ten percent of all people with diabetes have type 1 diabetes.
4. Type 2 diabetes can be prevented with moderate weight loss (10-15 pounds) and 30 minutes of moderate physical activity (such as brisk walking) each day.
5. The meal plan for a patient with diabetes isn’t very different than what is recommended for healthy people.
6. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in working-age adults.
7. People with diabetes are twice as likely to develop heart disease than someone without diabetes
8. Good control of diabetes significantly reduces the risk of developing complications and prevents complications from getting worse.
9. Bariatric surgery can reduce the symptoms of diabetes in obese people.
10. The indirect national cost of diabetes in 2007 was 174 billion dollars.