I thought you might find this as interesting as I did.

They're always telling us that if you eat less, you won't get diabetes. That's based on the idea that obesity causes diabetes. In fact, if you have diabetes, your body produces more insulin to compensate, and if you have excess insulin in your blood stream, your body lays down fat in the abdomen. In other words, fat is caused by diabetes, rather than causing it in the first place.

Anyhow, here is a county-by-county diagnosed diabetes rate map. It's new, from the CDC, never before been developed. Pennsylvania has two really bad counties for diabetes, Philadelphia county and Fayette county.

One of the risk factors for developing diabetes is having a poor education. Another one is being black. Aha! They win on both scores. Diabetes is much more a problem in the US Southeast than in the rest of the country. Most counties in Alabama and every county in Mississippi in the really bad category.

The risk factors include having a high obesity rate (32.9 percent of diabetics versus 26.1 percent nationally), sedentary lifestyles (30.6 percent versus 24.8 percent), lower education levels (24.1 percent with college degrees versus 34.3 percent) and more non-Hispanic blacks (23.8 percent versus 8.6 percent). Interestingly, the diabetes rate is higher in the really bad counties even for people with none of those risk factors.

The complete study was published in the Population Health Metrics scientific journal.

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