World Health Day – Fighting Diabetes
Today is WHOs World Health Day and the focus for this year is how to halt the rise of diabetes. WHO is calling for global action to halt rise of – and improve care for people with – diabetes. According to numbers from WHO, the number of people living with diabetes has almost quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million adults, with most living in developing countries. In 2014, more than 1 in 3 adults aged over 18 years were overweight and more than one in 10 were obese. Some of the the factors driving this dramatic rise include overweight and obesity.
Diabetes often leads to a number of complications several of which can be fatal. Heart attack, stroke, blindness, kidney failure and lower limb amputation. For people with diabetes the rates of lower limb amputations are 10 to 20 times higher. The often-associated loss of lower limbs with diabetes is caused by poor blood circulation and a compromised immune system.
WHO’s banner and theme for World Health Day (click for link)
Our vision is a world where people can choose sustainably sweetened product without health implications and stevia is a perfect tool to either reduce or completely remove sugar from your diet while still having great taste and sweetness! Particularly for diabetics, stevia enables them a greater choice of sweetened products as stevia does not trigger an insulin response when it is digested. Like sugar it is plant-based and natural while also being free from calories.
For those just wanting to lower their overall sugar intake, stevia also pares well with sugar and can be used to lower up to 50% of the sugar in most products without affecting taste or sweetness.
You can read more on how stevia is metabolized in our previous blog entry:
How is stevia metabolized by the human body?
Read more on WHOs effort to halt the spread of diabetes – and how you can get involved – on their Beat Diabetes campaign page
World Health Day 2016 – Beat diabetes