Diabetes: the sweet irony of modern technology.

Q: Why has diabetes become a major threat to global health? A: People with Type 2 diabetes produce an abundance of insulin in response to an environment that allows them to ingest more calories than ever before without many physical demands, such as walking, cycling and physical work, while leading a rather sedentary lifestyle sitting at a desk. This combination of excessive amounts of calories coming in and a paucity of calories going out leads people to gain weight and become obese. We have seen this imbalance in the developed world since the 1930s, leading to the rapid rise of Type 2 diabetes in the 1980s and 1990s. But now also in the developing world the amount of high caloric food that some people eat far exceeds their requirements and so the epidemic is spreading.