Type 2 Diabetes Cuts Eight Years Off Life

A study published in the June 2007 Archives of Internal Medicine has calculated that a person with type 2 diabetes is more than twice as likely to develop heart disease as someone without diabetes.

Moreover, they're likely to get it about eight years sooner than people without diabetes and likely to die about eight years younger than non-diabetic people. The study used data from the Framingham Heart Study, which has examined more than 5,000 residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, every two years since 1948.

Specifically, the study revealed that fifty-year-old men with diabetes develop heart disease an average of 7.8 years sooner than non-diabetic men and die an average of 7.5 years earlier than non-diabetic men with heart disease.

Fifty-year-old women with diabetes develop heart disease 8.4 years sooner than non-diabetic women and die an average of 8.2 years earlier than non-diabetic women with heart disease.

People with diabetes live almost as many years after a diagnosis of heart disease as non-diabetic people do; the problem lies in the fact that they develop heart disease sooner, so they're younger when they run out of time.

Take heart, though, from the knowledge that even after diabetes has been diagnosed, heart disease can be prevented by a healthy lifestyle and proper medical care. There have been great advances in the prevention of heart disease, including the use of statins, since the Framingham study began, but the lifestyle-mediated explosion of type 2 diabetes bodes ill for the future.


source:www.diabeteshealth.com