Rob Taub, an American TV commentator, bestselling author, writer for Huffington Post, and columnist for Newsmax, and somebody who has come to terms with diabetes in his own life, joins the program.
Rob starts the program by pointing out that there are two types of diabetes — Type 1 and type 2. "Type 1 is when your pancreas fails completely and most Type 1 diabetics are born that way. At this point it is incurable, and they are unable to survive without insulin. I think what is growing more, at an epidemic rate right now, not just in the US but worldwide, is Type 2 diabetes, which is when your pancreas is not effectively producing enough insulin and it results in kidney disease, heart disease, stroke and a variety of other problems. Whilst it may not be curable, and Type 2 is what I have, it can be treated and addressed. The trouble is, is that we are, as a world, are dealing with this reactively rather than pro-actively. When the treatment becomes exorbitantly expensive, then what you have is an economic situation that has resulted from this as well."
Diabetes does not discriminate, it can strike anybody at any time. Rob says: ‘I had been as fit as an athlete my whole life, and as I started approaching the age of 50 all of a sudden I realized that I was about 60 lbs. overweight, and I felt miserable. I was exhausted, I was run down, I was always hungry. Another problem with diabetes is that you urinate constantly because the body tries to purge itself of the excess sugar in your system, and too much sugar in your system can cause nerve damage, blindness, there are severe results and implications from diabetes. I was diagnosed and began aggressively treating myself with better diet, exercising, reading as much as possible, but it's a daily battle, and one that most people don't address properly, and its growing rapidly, especially with children and adolescents."
Diet appears to be the key issue both to treat Type 2 and to prevent it taking hold of the body in the first place. Rob says: "Diet is absolutely paramount. This is not just about not eating sugar. It is what your body converts into sugar, and we convert all of these badly refined carbohydrates like white rice, white flour, potatoes, French fries, any kind of such food into sugar… Most people today are eating junk food. As sophisticated as we are supposed to be, especially in the United States, when we talk about diet and food, mostly people have bad diets."
An article in ‘The Independent' newspaper last week cited figures indicating that there has been a 40% increase in children with Type 2 diabetes caused by obesity, and that British officials say this is a quote ‘unmitigated disaster'. Rob comments`: "There are doctors who are referring to the spread of Type 2 diabetes as an epidemic….I am going to give governments some blame here, because they are readily available to give us kidney dialysis, all kinds of medical treatment with Medicare, Obamacare (in the US), but they are doing nothing to educate people about what's casing all of their illnesses. Plus the fact you have children today who didn't grow up like their parents' generation. When I was a kid we had a TV with 3 stations, and no computers and no hand held devices, so I ran around all day. Even if I had a lousy diet I was always fit, but you have children growing up today who are obese, and obesity leads to diabetes."
Diet is not the only cause of this epidemic. Genetics are also important, Rob says: "I was genetically predisposed to diabetes; my mother was a Type 1 diabetic, but in retrospect I realized I could have been more aware of my diet, I was just uneducated and I didn't know. Like many young people I thought that I was going to live forever."
Political lobbying of fast food companies is a major factor. "I think that political lobbying is a big factor. All breakfast cereal, for example, is sugared. We are giving this to little kids, that was part of my downfall as a youth. I was a hyper-active kid as it was, I got about 4 hours of sleep a night, I got up and ate a bowl of heavily sugared cereal that was filled with all kinds of chemical junk, if you read the labels of these things, I don't think there is anything real in them. And then I was sent off to school, a jittery sugar-laden mess."
Rob points out that the problems exacerbated if you are living on a limited budget. "If you are on a tight budget, you go to fast food outlets like McDonalds, you can get a ‘dollar meal.' And people will do that, and I can understand, that if somebody is under financial duress, it's a great way to feed yourself. We have had crack downs on cigarettes in the US, now you can't even smoke them in a public place, but how bad is a terrible breakfast cereal for a child? Yet that is sold in abundance at any of our grocery stores…."
At the end of the program, host John Harrison suggests that compulsory education in schools about diabetes could be the way forward. "It's a great idea, my children who are now grown up, when they were in middle school, they were terrorized and frightened to death by the teachers telling them about smoking cigarettes. While smoking is bad, diabetes and obesity is another kind of slow death for them, so I do think that something needs to be done, and it is something that I speak to groups about and I'd like to do more of that. I would love to talk to younger people and try to nip the bud earlier because it's important. It's just how we go about it, and how we get a government like ours in the US to do something. I wish they would."
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