Half Of All Americans Will Develop Insulin Resistance

Filed in archive Research on July 31, 2006

It's a frightening statistic: that fifty percent of Americans will develop insulin resistance , a 'pre-diabetes' condition. Often, after developing resistance to insulin, diabetes will develop unless major changes are made in lifestyle, particularly exercise and diet.

"If we could just detect and treat the metabolic syndrome...we could reduce heart attacks in this country by 63 percent," said Dr. David Eddy of archimedes Inc., a company that makes computer-based analysis and decision-making tools.

Curing insulin resistance alone would reduce heart attacks by 42 percent, Eddy told a news conference.

"We found that people with pre-diabetes clearly have an excess of cardiovascular risk factors," Dr. Desmond Williams, a diabetes expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the news conference.

Although scary, sometimes being diagnosed as 'pre-diabetic' is just the motivation some people need to improve their health. Have you been diagnosed with insulin resistance? What are you doing to keep it from developing further?