Obesity and diabetes have affected more young people, with many taking to social media platforms to share their symptoms of being diagnosed with diabetes at a young age.
The hashtag “diabetes beginning to drain on young people” has become one of the trending topics on Sina Weibo, which has been read more than 46 million times.
Guo Xiaohui, a senior doctor at the endocrinology department of Peking University First Hospital, told Economic Information Daily that 20 years ago, none of her diabetic patients were under 30, but nowadays, around 20 percent of them are under 30.
Yao Qiyuan, a senior doctor at Huashan Hospital of Fudan University”s department of obesity and hernia, said there are diabetes patients who are in middle school or even primary school in recent years, some of whom are obese and have high blood pressure.
It is hard to imagine a 12-year-old child with blood sugar reaching 20 mmol/L and blood pressure reaching 200 mmHg, he said.
It is common knowledge in medicine that obesity is one of the major causes of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
According to a 2020 report on Chinese people’s nutrition level and chronic diseases released by the National Health Commission, around 10 percent of children under the age of 6 are obese, which increased to almost 20 percent for children aged between 6 and 17.
Xie Zhuangli, a doctor at Tongji Hospital of Tongji University’s department of endocrinology and metabolism, said that when young people suffer from chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure, their chances of suffering complications are significantly higher than those of older people.
For example, for diabetes, it takes, on average, five to 10 years for patients to develop complications after they are diagnosed, so young people are more likely to have complications.
These complications can cause disease in multiple organs, kidney diseases, even blindness and amputation, and will seriously affect the patient’s daily lives and bring burden to their family, she said.
Experts said the reason for the increasing number of young people who have diabetes is that they eat food with lots of oil and sugar and have an unhealthy daily schedule.
Some beverage brands have become so popular among young people that many of them seldom drink water, they said.
More importantly, they lack knowledge about chronic diseases and often think that only older people suffer from such diseases, Xie said.
Many young diabetic patients go to the hospital for treatment after they develop serious complications and it is often too late for effective intervention, she said.
Yao suggested that more efforts should be made to increase health education among teenagers, monitor children’s diets, and ensure that they have enough time for sports every day.