The pneumococcal vaccine can reduce the risk of getting pneumonia by 80 percent. Stay healthy get those shots. Diabetes claimed the lives of almost 65,000 people in the United States in 1998, and more than 29,500 of them were men. Diabetes is a chronic disease that has no cure. Many people first become aware of it only when they develop one of its life-threatening complications.
Advanced diabetes can cause blindness, kidney disease and severe nerve damage.
People with diabetes are also two to four times more likely to have heart disease and suffer from stroke. If you have a parent who developed diabetes in adulthood, your risk can be up to 50 percent higher. As the rate of obesity increases in the United States, so does the incidence of diabetes. The most common form of diabetes is type 2 diabetes. This form of diabetes generally develops after age 40 and affects up to 95 percent of adults who have the disease.