Doctors yesterday said the pathogenic factors leading to type 2 diabetes for Taiwanese might differ slightly from those that affect Westerners, in that East Asian people tend to have weaker insulin secretion and a higher body fat ratio.
Diabetes Association of the Republic of China secretary-general Lin Shih-yi (林時逸), who is also the director of endocrinology and metabolism at Taichung Veterans General Hospital, said type 2 diabetes has often been linked with obesity.
However, a Japanese retrospective study last year showed that while about 80 percent of Westerners with type 2 diabetes were obese, only abut 30 to 40 percent of Taiwanese were obese and the average age of onset was younger, he said.
East Asian people in general have weaker insulin secretion than Western people, causing the body to be unable to control blood sugar effectively, which means they develop diabetes more easily, Lin said.
Studies have shown that the weaker insulin secretion might be determined by particular genes, intestinal secretions, diet and other factors.
Diabetes Association of the Republic of China director-general Wayne Sheu (許惠恒), a superintendent at Taichung Veterans General Hospital, said among patients diagnosed with diabetes, only about 20 to 30 percent of East Asian patients have normal insulin secretion, lower than the approximately 50 percent of Western patients.
In addition, he said East Asian diabetes patients might not look obese, but many have a relatively high percentage of body fat, which can increase insulin resistance.
Sheu said there are more than 1.88 million people with diabetes in Taiwan and the prevalence of diabetes in adults is about 10 percent — higher than the global prevalence of 8.8 percent and 9.3 percent in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Taiwanese Association of Diabetes Educators on Friday last week published a low-glycemic cookbook, which nutritionists say could help people with diabetes control their blood sugar levels and help people without diabetes maintain a healthy weight.
Taiwanese Association of Diabetes Educators president Tu Shih-te (杜思德) said he treated a 19-year-old boy who had a body mass index of 24 and who did not look obese, but he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
The boy drank a cup of bubble milk tea nearly every day, did not exercise and his family has a history of diabetes, Tu said, adding he has seen several similar cases of young people without obesity diagnosed with diabetes.
He suggested people not only control their body weight, but also eat food low in sugars and fats, exercise regularly and get their blood sugar levels tested before and after a meal at least once a year, especially those whose family has a history of the disease.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater