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Questions and Answers
Q: What diseases do the activities of NIRC work to prevent? Q: Don’t we already have enough disease organizations? Why do we need another one? Q: What is active prevention and why is it important? Q: Why is early identification of insulin resistance important?
Q: What is NIRC? A: The National Insulin Resistance Council (NIRC) is a non-profit organization. Its only purpose is to cause the prevention of millions of non-infectious disease cases directly or indirectly driven by insulin resistance. It sponsors, operates, and collaborates with others on programs that lead to early identification of insulin resistant individuals and active prevention of non-infectious disease. (Return to questions).
Q: What diseases do the activities of NIRC work to prevent? A: The Council aims at the active prevention of millions of cases of diabetes, heart failure, stroke and other dreadful, but preventable non-infectious diseases directly associated with insulin resistance. Alzheimer’s has also recently been tied to insulin resistance. Diabetes alone is the leading cause of adult blindness, kidney failure and amputations, so many of those cases are also preventable. (Return to questions).
Q: Why do we need more emphasis on preventing non-infectious disease? Aren’t we doing enough, or at least all that is effective? A: Non-infectious disease is more wide-spread, and directly affects far more people than infectious diseases. But we don’t apply the same logic to them as we do to both. In all of North America, there are 2 million HIV/AIDS cases in society, with 65 thousand new cases a year (according to the United Nations UNAID report for 2006). Compare that with America’s 21 million diabetes cases and 1 million new cases each year. Is it possible we are working on diabetses prevention in proportion HIV/AIDS? The short answer is no. There is no ambiguity about infectious disease, ones caused by pathogens; everyone prefers prevention because we know that treatment and cure is not very good. We also know that the total cost of prevention is far less than treating and coping with legions of sick people. Maybe too many of us wrongly believe that
No matter the cause, prevention hasn’t been important enough when it comes to non-infectious diseases. We are paying a high price now. Diabetes alone costs over $120 billion a year for patient treatment. We endure over 400 thousand fatal heart attacks annually linked to insulin resistance. The good news is that research has already proven the preventability of non-infectious disease. All we need to do is implement programs, to mobilize around the reality. (Return to questions).
Q: Don’t we already have enough disease organizations? Why do we need another one? A: Organizations like the American Diabetes and American Heart Associations do immensely valuable work. Every one of their many doctors, researchers, association staffers and members personally want to prevent disease, not just ease the burdens on victims and their families. Here are three reasons why we need NIRC to magnify the value of such organizations to society:
Prevention gets much more lip service than resources or action relative to society’s needs. The National Insulin Resistance Council’s purpose is solely focused on active prevention to complement the work of disease-focused organizations. NIRC’s constituents and beneficiaries are relatively healthy people in society who want to stay that way, but one in four of whom have insulin resistance and mostly don’t even know it. Everyone realizes that it is less costly to prevent sickness than to pay for it, yet we are simply not organized to achieve the objective of prevention. The National Insulin Resistance Council exclusively fights to make this right. (Return to questions).
Q: What is active prevention and why is it important? A: Prevention means taking steps to avoid some outcome. Most non-infectious diseases have a genetic component and not much can be done about that at this point, except to identify those at risk. However, most non-infectious diseases also have very pronounced life-style components. That’s where active prevention is both important and possible. Active prevention is not easy, but it is extremely valuable because it works. These are some of the programs that NIRC/CDP intends to stimulate active prevention of millions of cases of non-infectious disease:
Q: Why is early identification of insulin resistance important? A: Insulin resistance is a genetically determined condition that exists in about 10% of all individuals. Specific life-style factors can trigger the condition at any age, even pre-teen. Excess weight is a primary trigger in about 80% of activated cases. Once triggered, the condition insidiously, slowly, and relentlessly destroys vascular and nerve tissue year in and year out even in the absence of noticeable symptoms, until very serious symptoms emerge, most often hypertension and pre-diabetes. Women are especially vulnerable to hormonal disruption leading to fertility problems among others. The dominant reason for early identification is to prevent triggering the condition in the first place. (Return to questions).
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