Ethnic minorities in the U.S. have nearly twice the risk of diabetes even with low BMI's

This came across my desk from Medscape. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/779072?src=nl_topic

Recently, the Excellence in Diabetes 2013 conference was held in Turkey. One of the big statements to come out of it was this: “ type 2 diabetes, usually associated with obesity, can occur in many seemingly thin people from ethnic minorities.”

 

"Diabetes risk is higher in all ethnic groups than in whites, and of course some of this is just due to body weight, but evidence is now building that people of many races may be at increased risk of diabetes and cancer before they are even considered conventionally overweight."

Meanwhile, Chittaranjan Yajnick, MD, from King Edward Memorial Diabetes Unit, Pune, India, also gave a talk on what makes Indians so susceptible to diabetes. "We have seen that Indians are often diagnosed with diabetes 10 years earlier and 5- to 10-units BMI thinner than whites," he noted.
Both believe the explanation lies in "hidden" visceral fat found inside the body, between organs, in Asians and probably other ethnic groups too, but not in whites. This in turn affects the levels of adipokines secreted, such as leptin and adiponectin, which can have adverse metabolic effects.

The knowledge that Asians and other ethnic groups are at much greater risk for diseases associated with obesity, such as diabetes and many cancers, than whites, is not new, Dr. Maskarinec explained. But more recently, researchers have begun to show that nonwhites who are not even particularly overweight or who are of "normal" weight are at much higher risk than whites.

"People have talked about some kind of adaptation for white people, who have had a greater number of years to adjust to the type of food we are eating now," she postulated.

What they aren’t saying is that the connection between weight gain and diabetes isn’t as tight as they thought. Most of all prescriptions for holding off diabetes suggest that the key is healthy eating and exercise. This, I think, is largely due to how Americans view being overweight, which is strongly associated with diabetes in this country. People become fat because they over eat and don’t exercise. It is the same old “gluttony and  sloth“ line.

This attitude has pervaded the science as well. The first suggestion is that thin diabetics are secret fat people. Their fat is hidden because of its visceral nature.  So the relationship still holds even if only by the slimmest of margins.

There is one thing which does, however, come through loud and clear.

Ethnic minorities that come to the U.S. and take up the standard American diet are at a very high risk of diabetes. There is something toxic in our food/environment that isn’t as widespread in the rest of world. It is becoming so though as we see in the rising rates of diabetes around the world.

People here who aren’t part of ethnic minorities tend to discount problem but they should view this as a “canary in a coal mine” situation. On some level, this is affecting everyone. We really need to quit looking at fat and start looking at what in our environment forces our bodies to put on fat.