Type 2 diabetes may not be contagious, but it certainly appears to be spreading. In 1958, the prevalence was 0.9 percent. By 2000, it had climbed to 4.4 percent, and it’s projected to hit 7.2 percent in 2050.
What accounts for this? Perhaps it’s the way residential neighborhoods have evolved to accommodate car rides to fast-food restaurants instead of walks to corner grocery stands.
A study published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine calculates that people who live in neighborhoods that are conducive to physical activity and healthy eating have a 38 percent reduced risk of developing diabetes compared with people who don’t.
The study looked at 2,285 adults who lived in Baltimore, the Bronx in New York and Winston-Salem, N.C., over five years. After controlling for factors such as age, sex, income, family history, drinking and smoking, researchers found that people in the top 10 percent of neighborhoods for promoting healthy diets and physical activity were less likely to become diabetic than people in the bottom 10 percent.
In some sense, the results aren’t terribly surprising, Dr. Mitchell H. Katz of the San Francisco Department of Public Health noted in an editorial accompanying the study. Diabetes rates were lower before families could afford multiple cars and folks had to walk quite a bit to get to schools, stores and jobs. Home-cooked meals may have featured lots of butter, but they weren’t routinely served with a side of fries and a refillable cup of soda. If there was a TV in the living room, channel surfers had to get up off the couch to change the station.
Correlation does not equal causation, of course. Perhaps people who value a healthful life style choose to live in neighborhoods with bike trails and health-food stores.
Doctors can’t do much about the genetic factors that might predispose someone to diabetes. But if public-health experts identify ways to make neighborhoods more healthful, we ought to give them a try, Katz said.
