Diabetes remains one of the leading killers in the United States, but has improved one slot (from 6th to 7th) on a list of the nation’s top 15 killers. Read the article from Diabetes News Hound here: http://diabetesnewshound.com/?p=328
From what I understand there are problems in counting diabetes related deaths. Many people who die from complications of diabetes actually have as the cause of the “heart disease” or “kidney failure”, when these problems were caused by diabetes.
Just a thought.
My understanding is the same as yours, Kristin. Did you see from the article that Alzheimer’s took over the 6th spot? I thought that Alzheimer’s was not a direct cause of death, either.
It seems that the only way that diabetes could be a direct cause of death would be from very high or very low BG.
I know that you can list more than one cause of death and some have become proactive to have diabetes ALSO listed as the cause of death when someone dies from a complication of diabetes.
I think that diabetes would be much higher on the chart if this was consistently done. But I’m just guessing…