MANILA, Philippines--For Dr. Tommy Ty Willing, chair and president of Diabetes Philippines, seeing young patients with Type 1 diabetes is already ?expected? as the condition usually begins in childhood, when their pancreas totally lose their ability to produce insulin.

And because their insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are already destroyed, these group of individuals now require daily insulin injections and regular monitoring of their blood sugar levels.

?What is not normal is to see more and more children and teenagers being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, a disease that is usually detected among the middle-aged group between 40 and 50 years old,? Ty Willing reported.

Traditionally, Type 2 diabetes has been thought of as an older person?s disease.

?We are seeing more and more Filipino children and teenagers developing Type 2 diabetes, partly because they eat too much of the wrong thing, and don?t get off their couch often enough,? Ty Willing lamented.

While kidney disease tops the complication that may occur if diabetes is not managed, heart attack, stroke, nerve disease that can lead to amputation of lower limbs and eye disease are also likely to develop.

Good news

?The good news is, these complications may still be delayed if not avoided if they will watch their diet, control their weight if they are getting fat and gets regular physical activity,? Ty Willing said.

This is why during the observance of World Diabetes Day early this month, Ty Willing supported a campaign that seeks to convince children, teenagers and young adults to increase their level of physical activity whether at home or in school.

The campaign uses the blue circle (the universal symbol for diabetes and World Diabetes Day), a finger hula-hoop, that seeks to remind the wearer to engage in any form of physical activity and get them thinking about diabetes.

?We need to act decisively because the odds are against us. While we blame lifestyle, unhealthy diet and less activity, the fact that we are also Asian makes us even more prone to diabetes even if there is no family history,? he said.

According to him, simple and rather inexpensive lifestyle change could help a lot. In fact, in one study, researchers concluded that with changes geared at weight loss and improving physical activity levels, people at high risk of developing diabetes could reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes by more than 50 percent!

Close to 8 million

Ty Willing said the prevalence rate of the diabetes in the Philippines has risen from just 3.0 percent in 1998 to 8.5 percent, meaning, close to 8 million Filipinos now have the condition and are being made to pay for the medical costs involved.

He estimated that a Type 2 diabetic patient needs at least P3,000 a month just for maintenance drugs, assuming he or she buys the cheapest generic drugs. The patient also needs to spend about P1,000 more every two to three months for regular blood tests. And then there is the dialysis of at least twice a week, although the ideal is every other day, which ranges from P2,000 to P5,000 per session.

?It?s quite costly, as one may find from these conservative estimates. And for a low- to middle-income earning family worrying about the next food on the table, the education of their children, the house rent, they would rather choose to skip the medication, which is very, very dangerous and unfortunate,? Ty Willing said.

The IDF predicts that the number of individuals with the disease will increase from 240 million in 2007 to 380 million by 2025, with an estimated 60 percent of those cases will be in Asia.