Hacker News Reader

Comment by sithlord | Hacker News Reader

Type 2 diabetes is also very much a genetic problem. Sure, being overweight may give you a more likely chance of seeing the issues arise (sooner that is)but I know plenty of people who are not overweight and have type 2 diabetes.

If someone has the genetic disposition for Type 2 diabetes in younger, more fit people they are still extremely likely to start seeing the effects as they age and lose activity (even if they do not become overweight/obese).

View on HN

I wonder what percentage of people with T2D are normal weight, because my impression is it's not very many people at all.

I would guess approximately none of them (or at least, none of them at time of diagnosis). Modern America has a very messed up view of what is and isn't a healthy weight.

That is false. My grandfather got type 2 with age and I will very likely get it too at some point. My grandfather was always at the lower border of underweight throughout his entire life (EU).

Overweight is a factor that accelerates this process.

Weight and what's normal varies between nations, but nobody considers body composition. A skinny kid with a beer belly will be full of visceral fat and weigh the same at same height like an Olympic swimmer. Also the dietary habits can trigger problems at any weight.

Let’s be honest, we aren’t talking about Olympic swimmers here.

My worry with jumping straight to questions like that is that it doesn't seem terribly clear to me that this is a case where any hypothetical correlation is due to causation. I'm no doctor, but my vague understanding is that relevant biochemistry is arranged such that it would more likely that they simply share a common cause.

And the reason why that matters is that getting the causality wrong might promote incorrect conclusions about how best to address the problem, and that that in turn might lead to ineffective or even harmful recommendations. Which I don't think is a mere academic concern; it seems that that's a mistake that health researchers (or at least health pundits) just keep making over and over and over again.

Anecdotal but I know quite a few and they didn't lose weight after diagnosis but were already at a normal body mass from before. It's possible there are other factors at play like stress.

Anecdotally, my sister's kid just got diagnosed with it. He is not overweight whatsoever, but they put frickin' ketchup on everything. But, yea the majority might be overweight, but anyone that eats just carbs could get it.

What about exercise though? I think a lot of people discount exercise because no one exercises enough to take off the correlating weight, but any kid who doesn't ever hit aerobic exercise must have correlated cardiac risks and any kid who never walks distances probably has risks of odd insulin and inflammation issues. When I was a kid, kids of all weights seemed to eat only processed garbage, and most parents were oblivious or thought it wasn't worth the strife, but exercise was unavoidable. Today, I notice walking strongly reduces my appetite.

Exercise is very important in many ways, it helps a great deal with metabolism long term, burns calories and has positive effects on both kinds of diabetes. It doesn't even have to be intense , just a daily walk is better than nothing.

With T2 ? Or with T1 ?

T2. He is only like 11 years old. So I think he was exercising enough, in terms of he plays a bunch of sports.

Looking at how the maps in the article are roughly the opposite of urban, I was a little hesitant to bring up the diesel particulate theory, but the maps actually could correspond to average amount of time in a vehicle..

If there is some kind of direct damage occuring to hormonal systems then it doesn't really have to correlate to weight and exercise related T2.

The roads of my childhood were definitely included higher polluting diesel trucks, but kids and pregnant women did spend a lot less time traveling and usually didn't ride in diesel vehicles themselves, there was that fine leaded gas..

That is unusually young for T2, the diagnosis might well change to T1.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com