If you are what you eat, you also may be a product of where you live: Living in a neighborhood where it's pleasant and easy to walk and fresh fruits and vegetables are close at hand can slash a person's risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, new research shows.
In fact, the risk of diabetes associated with living in such a "healthy" 'hood was 38 percent lower than for people who lived in unhealthy places, Dr. Amy H. Auchincloss of Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia and her colleagues found.
The findings raise the possibility that changing people's environments could help improve their health, Auchincloss told Reuters Health.
"There's certainly a lot of potential for making an impact," she said, pointing to initiatives such as improving public transportation, increasing green space, making sidewalks safer, and opening farmers markets in urban neighborhoods where supermarkets are scarce.
The risk of developing Type 2 diabetes for those living in the top 10 percent of neighborhoods based on resources for physical activity was about half of the risk for those living the areas where it was the hardest to be active. And people living in the 10 percent of neighborhoods with the best access to healthy food were about half as likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who lived in the worst 10 percent.
The healthier neighborhoods also tended to be wealthier, with a greater proportion of white residents, Auchincloss said. When she and her colleagues adjusted for factors such as race, ethnicity, family income, and wealth, the relationship between neighborhood and Type 2 diabetes risk was weakened somewhat, but remained.
Not everyone can choose where they live, the researcher conceded, and making communities healthier will require multiple players.
"There's unlikely to be a single bullet that will fix these epidemics," Auchincloss said. Nevertheless, "the potential for large scale interventions to have an effect is heartening."
© 2009 Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
