6 diabetes risk factors to watch out for as you age

HOW RACE FACTORS IN WHAT’S BEHIND THE GREATER DIABETES RISK FOR CERTAIN GROUPS You’ve heard — maybe even heeded — the warning: If you don’t watch what you eat and exercise regularly, you’re

raising your risk for diabetes. What you may not hear as much about is the role ethnicity plays. African Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans,, American Indians, and some Pacific Islanders

and Asian Americans are all at higher risk for diabetes than Caucasians. According to the 2020 National Diabetes Statistics Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, new

diabetes cases were highest among Hispanics, followed closely by non-Hispanic Blacks. That’s why the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends that health care workers consider

screening overweight and obese patients in these populations beginning no later than age 35.  Not only are racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately affected by the disease, they’re

also more likely to experience complications — such as blindness, kidney disease and amputations — than their white counterparts. For a long time, researchers couldn’t make sense of why

certain ethnic groups were hardest hit. They believed that genes were to blame — meaning more people of certain races were simply destined to develop diabetes. But research suggests that’s

not the case. A study published in 2017 in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_ set out to understand why Black adults in the U.S. are nearly twice as likely as white adults to

develop type 2 diabetes. The researchers found that both groups actually have the same biological risk. The reason for the disparity has to do with a familiar culprit: obesity. “Far and

away, the leading factor for type 2 diabetes appears to be obesity,” says study co-author Mercedes Carnethon of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Factors we

collectively refer to as the social determinants of health — our financial resources, access to health care, level of education and the neighborhoods we live in — all of these contribute to

the development of obesity and common complications of being overweight, such as diabetes.” Consider the consequences of living in a community that doesn’t have easy access to health care,

nutritious foods or spaces that lend themselves to physical activity. “These things lead people to make choices that result in a higher risk of obesity,” Carnethon says. “That’s really what

drives the disparities in the development of diabetes among ethnic groups.”