It's hard to fathom how many more times we need to be told, and in how many more ways.
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We eat too much sugar, our diets are terrible, and type 2 diabetes is now one of Australia's major health problems.
The COVID pandemic has forced many of us to reassess the way we've been living, working and socialising.
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Intense disruption is often followed by a sense of clarity, a whittling down of the things that really matter in life - time with family, work-life balance, quality interactions with our communities.
We should also be adding diet and lifestyle to this list.
It became clear early on in the COVID pandemic that people with underlying health issues had a reduced chance of beating the virus without health complications.
Type 2 diabetes, and associated health conditions such as obesity and heart disease, were significant factors when predicting how an individual might cope with COVID. But it's an epidemic that had been creeping up on hundreds of Australians long before we'd heard of COVID.
Almost 1.4 million Australians are living with some form of diabetes, with someone diagnosed every four-and-a-half minutes. But Diabetes Australia has acknowledged it is possible for adults with type 2 diabetes to manage their condition, and even send it into remission, through weight loss.
This can be achieved through intensive dietary change (not to be confused with extreme dieting) and bariatric surgery, and is more achievable for those who've lived with type 2 diabetes for less than five years.
In the past week this newspaper has united with others in the ACM network to examine the causes and consequences of what we're calling Australia's "silent assassin". With the help of a number of the country's leading experts on the subject, we are committed to helping our readers better understand type 2 diabetes.
We've also partnered with sports medicine clinician Dr Peter Brukner to offer every reader free access to his Defeat Diabetes app for three months. Eating better and moving more takes time and effort. It's more difficult than a couple of jabs in the arm. But we need to arrest this other stalking killer.
