Diabetes Health

Jump to another page... Introduction Diabetes prevalence Leisure time physical activity Obesity High-fat diet Fruits and vegetables—Fruit consumption Vegetable consumption Use of food labels High Blood Pressure and Hypertension Routine annual checkups Direct care physician to population ratio (1) Hospitalization rate for diabetes mellitus with complications (1) Age-adjusted mortality for diabetes mellitus (2) Years of potential life lost (2)

Vegetable consumption

Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber that may help protect you from chronic diseases.78 The United States Department of Agriculture recommends that people eat three or more servings of vegetables a day. The BRFSS asks respondents how many times a day they eat vegetables, but not the serving size. The Healthy People 2010 goal is that 50 percent of the population will consume three or more serving of vegetables each day. In the period 2004-2005, only 28 percent of Texans reported that they consume three servings of vegetables a day. In Bexar County, 27 percent reported they meet this standard. There appears to be little change in the percentage that report eating three or more vegetables a day across the state.

The size of the BRFSS sample is not large enough to produce reliable estimates of the percent of persons living in the sectors in the south of Bexar County who consume vegetables three or more times a day, except for the West sector. An average of 22 percent of residents of the southern sectors report eating vegetables three or more times a day. Thirty-six percent of residents in the West sector report eating vegetables three or more times a day. In the sectors in the north of Bexar County an average of 31 percent indicates they eat vegetables three or more times a day. Only 22 percent of those in the Northwest sector report eating vegetables three or more times a day. In the North Central sector, 50 percent report meeting the Healthy People 2010 goal.

Use of food labels

Labels on most foods provide information about nutritional content in foods. Reading and using the information can help make sure that one is getting the desired nutrients and eliminating foods that contain undesirable amounts of nutrients and chemical compounds. Whether or not people read food labels was not collected in the 2004 or 2005 BRFSS, but data collected in 2002 provides a reasonable estimate of the use of food labels. In 2002, 69 percent of Bexar County resident reported that they read and use food labels. The lowest percent reporting use of food labels was in the South sector at 63 percent. Sixty-six to 68 percent of residents in the East, West, and Northwest sectors report use food labels. The areas that report the highest use of food labels are the Northeast and North Central sectors at 72 and 74 percent respectively.

High Blood Pressure and Hypertension

It is important that high blood pressure be regulated to prevent additional damage to the kidneys that can be a result of diabetes. The Healthy People 2010 goal is to reduce the number of adults who have high blood pressure to no more than 16 percent of the adult population. In 2002, 95 percent of Bexar County adults reported that their blood pressure had been checked in the past two years.

Twenty-four percent of Bexar County residents reported in 2005 that they had been told they have high blood pressure. Twenty-five percent of Texans reported that they have been told by a health care professional that they have high blood pressure and 22 percent of Harris County reported being told they have high blood pressure. There has been no significant change in the percentage of people who report high blood pressure since 2002.

The sample size for Bexar sectors is marginal for calculating reliable estimates of the percentage with high blood pressure. Estimates for North Bexar and South Bexar sectors are both very close to the county average of 24 percent. Yet, Bexar County still exceeds the Healthy People 2010 goal for hypertension.