Dr. James A. Tart and Jim McNiff introduced guest speaker, Dr. Michael Soboeiro, a physician in internal medicine at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital, at the Sept. 13 weekly luncheon meeting of the Kiwanis Club of the Sandhills.

Soboeiro kicked off his presentation with sobering statistics. He said that currently, about 18 million Americans have been diagnosed with diabetes, with an additional 18 million undiagnosed or unaware that they have the disease. He added that if current obesity rates continue, in 10 years nearly one-third of all Americans will have some element of the disease.

Soboeiro noted that the Hispanic population is more at risk than other ethnic groups, and added that the costs of treating diabetes and its related complications (heart disease, nerve damage, strokes, kidney failure, loss of limbs, and blindness) will be astounding and a huge burden to the United States. With these statistics, Soboeiro suggested that diabetes become a primary-care disease instead of a specialty disease, noting that there are not nearly enough specialists, or endocrinologists, to handle the millions of new cases cropping up each year. He said that all primary physicians should become experts on diabetes.

Soboeiro explained that Type 2 diabetes, referred to as "adult" diabetes, results from insulin resistance combined with relative insulin deficiency.

In Type 1 diabetes, previously known as juvenile diabetes, the body fails to produce insulin.

He said that Type 2 diabetes is due to lifestyle and genetics, while Type 1 diabetes is sporadic and not, for the most part, related to genetics. Soboeiro urged members to exercise more and cut down on carbohydrates and sugar.

Soboeiro concluded his talk by explaining how diabetes is measured, noting that one of the best tests is the Hemoglobin A1c test, which measures the amount of sugar attached to a hemoglobin cell. There are also the Fasting Plasma Glucose (FPG) and the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) tests.