Determination and Prevention of Diabetes Mellitus: Exploring Factors and Strategies for Health

Running head: DETERMINATION AND PREVENTION OF DIABETES MELLITUS
DETERMINATION AND PREVENTION OF DIABETES MELLITUS
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1DETERMINATION AND PREVENTION OF DIABETES MELLITUS
Introduction
Health is a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being and not just the lack
of infirmity and disease, as defined by the World Health Organisation. Australians are
now living longer than before, but most of them are living with one or more chronic
disease, which affects the quality of one's life, also of the family members and carers.
Many of the chronic conditions are due to lifestyle factors. Australians face many health
issues, among which cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, respiratory
disease, and osteoarthritis are the most common chronic health conditions. These health
issues are mainly the result of obesity, physical inactivity, and excessive consumption of
alcohol and usage of tobacco ("Department of Health | Discussion of the four key health
issues", 2019). The study is based on diabetes mellitus type 2; this topic is chosen
because this is one of the most prevalent diseases, as 5.1% of the population of Australia
are diagnosed with diabetes ("Department of Health | Diabetes", 2016), and almost 85-
90% is of type 2. The region of Australia, which is most prevalent in diabetes mellitus
type 2, is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the indigenous people of
Australia.
Discussions
Determinants of Health
Many factors determine the health of an individual. To great extent educational level,
genetics, income and the environment where one live, affects the health of the
individual, whereas there is minimal impact of access and use of healthcare services on
one's health ("WHO | The determinants of health", 2019). The determinants of health are:
1. Social status and income: good health is always related to higher revenue and
higher social status. The more the difference between the rich and the poor
people; the more the disparity in health (Hwang & Shon, 2014).
2. Education level: the lower the level f education, it is considered, more miserable is
the health. Poor education level is linked to low confidence level and more stress
which affects health (Grech et al., 2017).

2DETERMINATION AND PREVENTION OF DIABETES MELLITUS
3. Gene: gene, as inherited by our parents plays a vital role in determining the
health, life span and the chances of developing a disease.
4. Physical environment: clean air and water, safe and healthy workplaces, safe
houses and communities are generally required for good health (Moore et al.,
2015).
5. Gender: gender also plays a role in health. The type and time when an individual
will contract a disease up to an extent is determined by gender ("WHO | The
determinants of health", 2019).
Genetic factors
The Australians suffers from diabetes mellitus type 2, which results in acquiring
different other diseases in an individual, like renal problem and failure, retinopathy,
cardiovascular diseases and so on. One can acquire the disease due to the inheritance
that is the parents of the individual had also suffered due to diabetes, which is due to the
defect in the genes. A study on the Genome-based association analysis conducted for
comparing the cases of retinopathy due to diabetes with a diabetic patient with no
retinopathy, shows that diabetes mellitus type 2 has an important association with
retinopathy, along with other factors like age, sex, nephropathy, hypertension, duration
of the disease and the sugar level in blood.
The study shows an association of diabetic retinopathy with chromosome number
17 on the q arm at 25.1 loci. This study is the first to report that SNP rs9896052 is
associated with diabetic retinopathy. It also suggests that the association with
retinopathy is not dependent on the type of diabetes a person suffers from (Burdon et al.,
2015). There are also other SNPs present in this locus that is linked with diabetic
retinopathy, which suggests that diabetes mellitus type 2 is associated with an
individual's genetic makeup.
Metabolically healthy obese
The study of the paper based on the outcome of metabolically healthy obese shows that
there is increased risk of developing diabetes mellitus type 2 in the obese who are
metabolically active when compared with normal-weight metabolically healthy people.

3DETERMINATION AND PREVENTION OF DIABETES MELLITUS
The diabetes rate increases when a metabolically healthy obese person progresses to a
metabolically at-risk people. The study also suggests that if an obese person maintains
their metabolically health they have risks as same as the standard weight metabolically
healthy people. The occurrence of obesity in Australia is two in three adults ("Overweight
& obesity Overview - Australian Institute of Health and Welfare", 2019). Obesity results
mainly due to the difference in the intake of energy through diet and expenditure of
energy through physical activities. Genetic and environmental factors also play a role in
obesity. Since obese people have a higher risk of diabetes mellitus type 2 than the
average weight people do, it can be said that lack of physical activity is one of the health
issues regarding diabetes. The kind of food intake also affects body weight. If one
consumes diet, which has a low content of fiber, high in carbohydrates, and fat, drinks
highly sweetened beverages, there will be a massive intake of energy and will lead to
weight gain (Bhadoria et al., 2015). To summarise the study, we can say that lack of
physical activity, and the type of food intake leads to weight gain or obesity, which can
results in diabetes mellitus type2 in individuals.
Stress-related factors
The factors, which give stress like severe mental health, job strain, position in the
society and conflict with others affects an individual's health causing chronic diseases
like diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease and so on. The study of the paper job strain
as a risk factor to type 2 diabetes shows a close association of diabetes mellitus type 2
with the stress related factors. The paper concludes that there is a 1.5 fold increase in
the risk of the occurrence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in the people suffering from job
strain. The risk of acquiring diabetes is the same in both men and women. An individual
with job strain has the risk of suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus irrespective of
unhealthy lifestyle factors such as obesity, physical inactivity, unhealthy eating habits,
smoking, excessive alcohol consumption. Thus, it can be stated that even if the
conventional risk factors are controlled, there is a high risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in
people who are exposed to stress. This study is based on job strain, which includes all
the aspects of job-related stress, like effort-reward imbalance, job insecurity, conflicts
with colleagues and so on.