DIRECT NICOTINE LINK: YOUTH PREDIABETES SURGES ALONG WITH VAPING, NOT EXPLAINED BY OBESITY
Provided beginning four years ago, media ignore evidence warning of the child diabetes-vaping-nicotine links
by Clark Miller
Published April 4, 2022
As predicted, large increases among youth in use of nicotine by inhalation as use of e-cigarettes (vaping) has surged are associated with newly reported doubling of teen prediabetes prevalence over the same period. That was foreseeable based on the direct link between nicotine and risk of diabetes onset, as explained here at A Critical Discourse beginning in August of 2018 and in posts repeatedly after that. The new report follows publication of the same predictable results for adults four weeks ago, described here.
Prediabetes prevalence nearly doubled among U.S. youth from 1999 to 2018, national data indicated.
According to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data on over 6,500 youth, the prevalence of prediabetes increased from 11.6% in 1999-2002 to 28.2% in 2015-2018, Junxiu Liu, PhD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues reported in JAMA Pediatrics.
. . .
Some of the sharpest spikes in prevalence occurred in youth with obesity. Increases across BMI groups form 1999-2002 to 2015-2018 were:
- Underweight or normal weight: 9.42% to 24.3%
- Overweight: 15.3% to 27.5%
- Obesity: 18.2% to 40.4%
This dramatic spike in prediabetes prevalence was apparent for youth of all ages. Specifically, those ages 12 to 15 saw a rise in prediabetes prevalence from 13.1% in 1999-2002 up to 30.8% by 2015-2018. As for older teens ages 16 to 19, these rates likewise more than doubled from 10% up to 25.6%.
That’s a distortion of the results. For kids with obesity, the prevalence about doubled, that is, increased by a factor of 2.2. For overweight kids, prevalence was close to doubling, a factor of 1.8.
An exact doubling would be an increase by a factor of 2.0.
Right.
And for kids underweight or normal weight, the increase in prevalence was greater than for overweight or obese kids, 2.6, or a factor of slightly more than two and a half.
That is, the spike in prevalence of prediabetes for youth over a period of surging use of nicotine by vaping was not accounted for by obesity. The increase was about as much for overweight as for obese (a higher BMI than overweight) and was, notably, highest for kids who were normal weight or underweight.
[From a recent post]
That’s right, nicotine
has a direct effect on insulin biochemistry and would whether administered by smoking combustible cigarettes or by vaping. Nicotine is nicotine.
That all sounds alarming, on top of multiple, worsening lethal public health threats, and especially in the context of runaway use of nicotine by youth by vaping and a youth obesity epidemic already raising concerns about increasing incidence of diabetes.
Who saw that coming?
I did, at A Critical Discourse, in multiple posts over the past 4 years including this post in August of 2018 noting the direct contribution of nicotine to risk of onset of diabetes, then repeatedly over the following years, like here, and here, and here, some 6 to 10 posts in all noting the links among nicotine – diabetes – youth vaping epidemic.
Almost without exception, those posts published here at A Critical Discourse on the established relationships among nicotine and risk of diabetes as related to surging use of nicotine by youth and adults in e-cigarettes were summarized and provided to media and health writers by email in the form of a “story tip”.
Those went to some 30 to 40 major media outlets and healthcare writers.
Here’s the email text of the story tip release for the first post highlighting the known, direct link to diabetes from nicotine, provided media in September of 2018, with citations of the primary research –
Release email Subject Line: FDA Vape Harm Reduction Plan, Medical Industry, and Media Ignore Vape Nicotine Link to looming Diabetes Epidemic
Email text:
Excerpt from the new post at acriticaldiscourse.com :
Promotion of e-cigarettes to address tobacco use as “harm reduction” is supported by the medical establishment citing signs of decreased rates of both tobacco and e-cigarette use by youth, but more recent data point to worsening effects: booming rates of vaping by kids, increasing their risk of smoking, and through the known and ignored action of nicotine helping to fuel a diabetes epidemic.
The missing, potentially lethal, epidemic links – missing from the scientific reviews, medical industry recommendations, and media accounts- are the:
1) direct effects of nicotine on risk of onset of type 2 diabetes and worsening of diabetes,
3) the diabetes public health epidemic described as posing the greatest risk to public health , looming and fueled by increased latent risk from a childhood obesity epidemic.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4002374/
- https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/23/16923070/nas-report-e-cigarettes-health-risks
3.https://clindiabetesendo.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40842-016-0039-3
Here’s the text of a story tip release, emailed November of last year for a post published in December of 2018 (with separate story tip release at that time) and updated October of 2021 with new research pointing to recent increases in onset of diabetes in youth corresponding to surges in vaping and highlighting the confluence of two public health dangers – exploding use of nicotine by vaping including by young people, and new concerns about increasing rates of diabetes in youth –
Release email Subject Line: Story Tip: UPDATE – INCREASING EVIDENCE LINKS YOUTH VAPING TO REVERSAL OF DECLINES IN CIGARETTE SMOKING, NEW TROUBLING DIABETES TRENDS
Email text:
With new vaping approvals last week, have regulators been “snuck up on” again?
New post at Illness and Cure – UPDATE – NICOTINE LINKS YOUTH VAPING, REVERSAL OF DECLINES IN CIGARETTE SMOKING, NEW TROUBLING DIABETES TRENDS
Excerpts from the new post at Illness and Cure
That apparent reversal of historically declining cigarette use in youth concurrent with booming vaping is now evidenced by newly released data from both Health Canada and from population health surveys in France, where ““the downward trend in daily smoking observed between 2000 and 2008 reversed, with a slight increase over the 2008 – 2014 period.” Ireland now joins the U.S., Canada and France with clear signs of reversal of decades-long declines in youth cigarette use, linked to vaping of nicotine as a gateway.
. . .
The missing, potentially lethal, epidemic links – missing from the scientific reviews, medical industry recommendations, and media accounts – are the:
1) direct effects of nicotine on risk of onset of type 2 diabetes and worsening of diabetes,
UPDATE: NEW EVIDENCE OF TROUBLING YOUTH DIABETES TRENDS CONSISTENT WITH PREDICTED EFFECTS OF INCREASING NICOTINE USE WITH VAPING
Pediatricians are raising alarms about new evidence for increasing prevalence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes over the past two decades, based on a 2021 report in JAMA.
The findings appear more consistent with effects related to the known direct relationships among nicotine and risk of development of diabetes and surging nicotine use in youth tied to the vaping epidemic than to effects of persistent increases in youth obesity alone, another significant risk factor.
From the JAMA report –
. . .
From that previous post –
The significance and potential public health threat of these trends, which may include nicotine use by youth increasingly by mutually reinforcing routes of administration – vaping and return to cigarette smoking – is heightened by concurrent increases in incidence of type 2 diabetes and a primary risk factor for its onset, obesity.
Remarkably, the esteemed Academies and Medical Industry reviews and recommendations along with media analyses of results, policy, and implications for public health have not yet addressed the concurrent public health epidemics directly impacted by vaping “harm reduction” promotion campaigns – childhood obesity epidemic and childhood and adult diabetes epidemic fueled partly by nicotine use.
That seems like a public health concern worth the investigative and reporting attention of American journalism over the past 4 years, while vaping boomed among adults and youth. To be fair, American media have been distracted, focused on other reporting related to vaping – as described here, and here, here, here, here, and here.
