Diabetes cases soar by 60% in past decade.

Bloody hell, that's 45 yards!!!

GPs get paid extra for every patient on the book that is diabetic. I was given to believe that it was £146 a throw in Greenwich two years ago.

avoid the grain and you'll be fine.

dunlaying, are you suggesting GPs are needlessly amputating feet so they can make £146 per pair of limbs?

That's a much better price than the dairy farmers
would get for a leg of beef

There’s a financial incentive for GPs if they can get half their patient’s HbA1c levels lower than about 7%. To do this drugs are prescribed. Some studies have shown that this either makes no difference or increases the risk of death.

So there’s an incentive to the GP, there’s an incentive to the drug companies and seeing as a change of diet would probably be just as effective, there’s no incentive for the big food companies to stop making unhealthy garbage.

The only one who doesn’t win by you being sick is you.

I meant an incentive for you to be classed as 'diabetic'.

Massive increase in the consumption of sugar. Mainly from junk food, but also so called healthy foods. E.g fruit and grains in wheat breakfast cereals. The wheat itself is bad enough. The genetically modified crops are nothing like they were 50 and more years ago. Full of sugar, which is why eating  bread is the most common reason people have fat stomachs. Stop eating bread, and other products made from wheat - and you will easily lose weight, and  consequently not be at risk from type 2 diabetes.

I'm guessing, perhaps cynically (?), that the thresholds have also been artificially lowered this last 10-20 years or so to ensure that an increasing number of our citizens are classified as 'at risk' from diabetes/obesity, thus generating a lot of work/prescriptions/money for all (except the patient obviously)? 

Talking with others, I've also become aware that not every NHS practice necessarily works to the same yardstick when measuring the 'at risk' factor.

What a racket.

Similar story with statins.

Indeed Bix. A few years ago during a particularly difficult and stressful time my weight went up (comfort eating/overeating) and blood pressure with it.

Went for a check-up and was advised (with embarrassing haste) to go on blood pressure/statin medication. I suggested an alternative strategy, involving me eating less, exercising more, getting weight off and blood pressure down. Less than a year later, all goals easily accomplished without a single tablet consumed.

Could this common-sense strategy beneficially be rolled-out across the UK do you think ?

It is common sense, if nobody was ill, the medical profession would be a poor one. The food industry need to be clamped down on hard, diabetes, obesity, cancers, metabolic problems have all gone through the roof in the last 40 odd years, what started to happen 40 years ago? changes in wheat processes and cheaper methods of producing sugar thanks to corn.

Could this common-sense strategy beneficially be rolled-out across the UK do you think ?

Not a chance.

We have become an 'instant' society. Instant gratification. Instant results.

Commitment to anything long term (such as lifestyle changes) is not an option for many when popping a pill (or even popping a totally useless placebo) is a much preferable option.

I share your cynicism Alun.

Rates of obesity and % overweight in the UK don't seem to have moved much at all over the last 10 years despite the hysteria. Perhaps we're just better at identifying diabetes.

scandanavian_haven     17 Aug 15 12:31 
It is common sense, if nobody was ill, the medical profession would be a poor one. The food industry need to be clamped down on hard, diabetes, obesity, cancers, metabolic problems have all gone through the roof in the last 40 odd years, what started to happen 40 years ago? changes in wheat processes and cheaper methods of producing sugar thanks to corn.




Spot on. See my post 11.08