A lifelong illness can be prevented Obesity is blamed for an increase in diabetes among children.
Experts agree that the epidemic results from high-calorie diets and lack of exercise.
Diabetes, once a disease affecting a limited group of older people, has been increasing dramatically around the country and in Rhode Island, now striking even children. Driven by obesity and inactivity, difficult to control and costly to treat, diabetes already eats up an estimated 15 percent of health-care expenditures and 30 percent of Medicare costs. Plus, there are the unmeasurable costs in human suffering. If it's not treated correctly, diabetes will take you a piece at a time. In 1996, diabetes played a role in 193,140 deaths nationwide.