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CANBERRA (Reuters) - Diabetes poses a deadly threat to indigenous people across Asia, the Pacific and the Americas as Western lifestyles and diets replace traditional habits, medical experts warned on Monday.

Professor Martin Silink, head of the Brussels-based International Diabetes Foundation, said indigenous people had a greater genetic risk of contracting type 2 diabetes, which is often undiagnosed.

“They also have the genes that make the diabetes more damaging, so they are more prone to develop the serious complications of diabetes,” Silink told Reuters.

About 230 million people — or about six percent of adults worldwide — have type 2 diabetes, but the problem was worse in developing nations and among indigenous people, where up to one in two adults will have the disease.

These findings were showcased at a gathering in Melbourne of diabetes experts from the United States, Canada, Australia and the Pacific islands.

Conference host Professor Paul Zimmet said diabetes was unknown in the Pacific before World War II, but now the region has some of the highest rates in the world and the existence of indigenous communities is at risk.

Western Lifestyles and Diets, or in otherwords processed foods. 

Jo’s BG This Morning: 66 — 1 glucose tablet