Asian Scientist (Aug. 6, 2013) – A study in Australia has found that pointing the finger at fat as the major or sole contributor to contracting type 2 diabetes is misleading and wrongly promotes the idea that the condition is entirely self-induced.
Flinders University public health researcher Dr Darlene McNaughton has completed a study, published in Critical Public Health, that investigated how diabetes is being presented in research and in the media over the past 15 years.
According to her study, weight is increasingly being posited as the primary or sole cause of diabetes, and that this is a dangerous oversimplification.
“There is still a lot of uncertainty about the etiology of diabetes and there are a number of potential risk factors at play include ageing, gestational diabetes, genetics, under nutrition, poverty and family history, many of which are beyond individual control,” said Dr McNaughton.
“Despite this, overweight and obesity are increasingly depicted not only as risk factors, but also as the central cause of the disease,” she said.
The idea that weight or fatness cause diabetes has been gaining traction over the past two decades. This has coincided with assertions that there is an obesity epidemic in Australia.
However, the cause of diabetes is much more complicated than this. In many cases, a gain in weight is actually a symptom of diabetes even if research has demonstrated that obese people do have slightly higher rates of diabetes than people of ordinary weight.
“But at the same time, there are an awful lot of obese or overweight people who don’t have diabetes and who never will, because it’s more complicated than ‘weight equals diabetes’,” said Dr McNaughton.
Conversely, the presumption that weight generates diabetes means that people who are not overweight may think that they cannot contract diabetes, leading them to overlook symptoms that indicate the disease.
Dr McNaughton said while the general population does identify genetics as a factor, many people also attributed diabetes primarily to weight, including those with the condition.
“The dominant message that people with diabetes seem to be getting is ‘you have done this to yourself because you are overweight or obese, as a result of an unhealthy lifestyle’,” she said.
According to Dr McNaughton, people who are overweight or obese experience considerable negativity and judgement in Australia and, like people with diabetes, are frequently viewed as a drain on the health system.
“Such stigmatisation is almost always counterproductive in terms of seeking support for the treatment of type 2 diabetes”, Dr McNaughton said.
“The last thing we want is a situation where people feel ashamed for a condition that has very complex causes that we still really don’t understand, and are not seeking social or medical support.”
The article can be found at: McNaughton (2013) ‘Diabesity’ Down Under: Overweight And Obesity As Cultural Signifiers For Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.
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Source: Flinders University; Photo: Tony Alter/Flickr/CC.
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