All's Fair...but Not in Diabetes Women's Unique Vulnerability: Part I.

Of the almost 200,000 people who die each year from diabetes or its complications, almost 110,000 are women. Compared with breast cancer--the disease women fear most--diabetes exacts more than twice the toll in lives. This article, the first of two on women's nutritional health and diabetes, deals primarily with the impact of diet and exercise on type 2 diabetes and with the major complication of diabetes, heart disease. "For every person in the United States who has diabetes and is diagnosed, there is one who is not," says Lesley Fels Tinker, a nutrition scientist at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a member of the American Dietetic Association's Nutrition & Health Campaign for Women advisory board. Obesity, a chronic disease in itself, is also a major risk factor for diabetes, especially for women. "Although type 2 diabetes is largely genetic," explains Roger Mazze, senior vice president at the Minneapolis International Diabetes Center, "obesity will set it off." INSETS: IMPACT STATEMENT: DIABETES;GLUCOSE FOR COMFORT;TALKING THE TALK;RECAP OF THE DIABETES CONTROL AND COMPLICATIONS TRIAL (DCCT)