For the last 10 years the experts have been telling us that type 2 diabetes in kids as young as four has become an epidemic. Once seldom seen before the age of 60, type 2 diabetes now is found in children as young as four, but the actual statistics don’t really point to an epidemic.

According to statistics compiled by the National Diabetes Clearing House, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, in the United States in 2007, about:

• 1 in 20,000 children under the age of 10 was diagnosed as a diabetic, type 2
• 1 in 10,000 Americans aged 10 to 19 is diagnosed with the condition

Of course, if it’s your child who is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, it’s a tremendous health concern to you. But is type 2 diabetes the result of eating too much sugar, lying around to be entertained by TV and “wii games” and not getting outside to play?

The real culprit in type 2 diabetes of childhood is not the children who get it. The real cause of childhood non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus may be agricultural pollution. For uncounted generations until about 1970, farmers had to spend a lot of time pulling, hoeing, and burning weeds. A single farmer might have to find 50 to 500 helpers to get rid of weeds in the springtime.

Then came the modern chemical “wonder” known as atrazine. Farmers could simply spray atrazine on fields before their crops came up and most weeds and grasses would die. The expensive and time-consuming process of pulling out weeds by hand was no longer necessary.

Farmers should not be blamed for trusting the chemical companies. Natural health expert Robert Rister recounts an incident from his childhood on a wheat, sorghum, and cotton farm when the atrazine salesman came out to demonstrate how “safe” the product was. The salesman ate a pound of atrazine and showed no ill effects, at least not until he died of prostate cancer at the age of 44… two years later.

Epidemiologists have noticed that children who get type 2 diabetes tend to live in places where farmers have used the most atrazine. In the United States, this is in the Corn Belt of the Midwest. Children of migrant workers, who tend to be of Hispanic or African-American descent, also get heavy exposure to atrazine. The children most at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, not coincidentally, live in the corn raising states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, or have parents who work in the fields… or work in the fields themselves.

Another heavy concentration of type 2 diabetes in children is along the Mississippi and Rio Grande rivers, where runoff from farms carries this, and other potent diabetes-causing chemicals. And although children with this form of diabetes do tend to be inactive and overweight, it’s impossible to say which comes first… the inactivity or the diabetes that saps energy for outdoor play.

Non-insulin dependent diabetes in children is not a result of kids being lazy. It’s not the result of bad parenting. A major cause of the condition is exposure to environmental toxins. The toxin is atrazine in the United States, but it is arsenic in India, Australia, and much of the developing world.

Right now, the “epidemic” of type 2 diabetes in children under the age 20 is limited to the poor, but growing populations reaching out farther and farther for water supplies will expose more and more children to chemicals. The time is now to demand clean water for lifelong health for all and stop the “epidemic” of type 2 diabetes in children.

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• Type 2 Diabetes - How Did You Get It?

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