Diabetes educator Cornelia Cristofor teaches how to perform a blood sugar test at the Nicolae Paulescu National Institute for Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolic Diseases in Bucharest, November 13, 2012. Diabetes patients are instructed how to carry out blood sugar tests and how to self administrate insulin. November 14 is World Diabetes Day.
Hundreds of supporters showed up to walk in the annual Walk to Stop Diabetes, despite being one of the coldest mornings in months, Saturday October 6, 2012 on the Southern Illinois University campus in Edwardsville, Ill. The 1.5 mile and 3 mile routes wound through the botanical gardens on the campus and ended with a health and wellness fair with entertainment.
This photo taken Sept. 20, 2012, shows female and male condoms and instruction pamphlets available for the taking during HIV class at the Edgewood Senior Apartment Building in Washington. Washington seniors are used to talking about a host of health issues. Alzheimer's. Diabetes. High cholesterol. Now officials in the nation's capital are asking seniors to think about a different disease: HIV.
In this photo taken Sept. 20, 2012, Allie Thomas, left, Catherine Moore, center, and Yvonne Johnson, right, listen during HIV class at the Edgewood Senior Apartment Building in Washington. Washington seniors are used to talking about a host of health issues. Alzheimer's. Diabetes. High cholesterol. Now officials in the nation's capital are asking seniors to think about a different disease: HIV.
In this photo taken Sept. 20, 2012, Stella Surratt, foreground, and other raise their hands in response to a question during HIV class at the Edgewood Senior Apartment Building in Washington. Washington seniors are used to talking about a host of health issues. Alzheimer's. Diabetes. High cholesterol. Now officials in the nation's capital are asking seniors to think about a different disease: HIV.
Obesity and diabetes may not be the double whammy people expect, with an analysis of previous studies surprisingly finding that overweight and obese people who get diagnosed with the blood sugar disorder tend to live longer than their leaner peers.
The findings, which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, were based on data from five earlier studies that tracked people over time to identify risk factors for heart disease.
Study leader Mercedes Carnethon of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago said this sort of obesity paradox had been observed before in chronic diseases such as heart and kidney failure -but it doesn't mean gaining weight is a good way to improve your prognosis if you get the disease.
In fact, it's probably not that extra pounds are protective, but that lean people who get diabetes are somehow predisposed to worse health.
Perhaps those individuals are somehow genetically loaded to develop diabetes and have higher mortality, she said. A normal-weight person who has diabetes has an extremely high mortality rate.
More than 2,600 participants developed type 2 diabetes during the studies, and 12 percent of them had a normal weight when they got the diagnosis.
The death rate was 1.5 percent per year among overweight and obese people, compared to 2.8 percent per year among their trimmer peers.
After accounting for several risk factors for heart disease, including age, blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking, lean people were more than twice as likely to die at any given point as heavier people. The same held true for deaths caused by heart disease, which is linked to obesity.
It was a little bit unexpected to see that, said Carnethon.
One potential limitation of the study is that the researchers couldn't always account for how much people smoked, which might explain part of the results.
