Academy Award winner Viola Davis has opened up about her prediabetes diagnosis, sharing that she comes from a family with a history of type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m one of 84 million American adults living with prediabetes and I\u2019m sharing my story for the first time in an effort to inspire others to take action against the type 2 diabetes epidemic,\u201d Davis said in a statement after narrating \u201cA Touch of Sugar,\u201d a new documentary about type 2 diabetes epidemic in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Davis received her diagnosis despite having experienced no symptoms, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNone whatsoever. I felt totally healthy and able \u2026 I went in for a hormone test, and my doctor took an A1C test,\u201d Davis said of the blood test that takes the average of your blood sugar levels for the past two to three months and is used to diagnose type 1 and type 2 diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose (also called blood sugar) is too high, according to the National Institutes of Health. Blood glucose is the body\u2019s main source of energy. Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, helps glucose get into your cells to be used for energy. In type 2 diabetes, your body doesn\u2019t make enough insulin or doesn\u2019t use insulin well. Too much glucose then stays in your blood, and not enough reaches your cells. Over time, too much glucose in your blood can cause health problems, such as heart disease, nerve damage, eye problems, and kidney disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the most recent reports, a study published by MedScape revealed that 13.3 percent of all African-Americans have diabetes and Blacks are 1.8 times as likely to have diabetes compared to non-Hispanic whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Davis, who has won an Academy Award, an Emmy and a Tony, said she hopes her new documentary will shed light on the stigma around the diabetes and also help others be more productive about their health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy sisters are both struggling with type 2 diabetes and my aunt also died from complications of the disease,\u201d Davis said. \u201cGrowing up, we just said they had \u2018the sugar\u2019 which didn\u2019t sound that concerning. But, when you look at the facts, there\u2019s nothing harmless about diabetes \u2013 it\u2019s a chronic disease that needs to be taken seriously if we\u2019re going to get it under control.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Davis joined forces with the pharmaceutical company Merck to narrate \u201cA Touch of Sugar,\u201d which also depicts how the disease affects all communities. The film reportedly is part of a larger initiative led by Merck called \u201cAmerica\u2019s Diabetes Challenge: Get to Your Goals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA Touch of Sugar\u201d debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are 30 million Americans with type 2 diabetes and 84 million with prediabetes. There are 324 million people in this country, so that’s half the population right there,\u201d Davis said. \u201cI think this documentary is really wonderful because it’s confronting the stigma around diabetes, and it\u2019s giving a voice to something that has been voiceless for way too long and that\u2019s why the numbers are too high.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Academy Award winner Viola Davis has opened up about her prediabetes diagnosis, sharing that she comes from a family with a history of type 2 diabetes. \u201cI\u2019m one of 84 million American adults living with prediabetes and I\u2019m sharing my story for the first time in an effort to inspire others to take action against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1412,1411,1410],"class_list":["post-2299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-a1c-test","tag-type-2-diabetes","tag-viola-davis","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2300,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2299\/revisions\/2300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}