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In 1999-2000, 7.5% of the Australian population aged 25 years and older had diabetes, 8.0 % of males and 7.0% of females. In people 75 years and over 23.6% had diabetes.
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For every known case of diabetes, there was one undiagnosed case.
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Almost 30% of adult Australians had elevated blood pressure or were on treatment for this condition.
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One in six Australians participated in no physical activity, while only half of all Australians were participating in sufficient physical activity to maintain good health (defined as 150 minutes per week).
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At the turn of the century, there were almost one million Australians with diabetes.
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Almost 60% of Australians were classified as either overweight or obese, 2.5 times more than in 1980.
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The number of people with diabetes has trebled since a broadly based blood survey was undertaken in 1981.
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In comparison to people with normal glucose tolerance, those with diabetes were more likely to have hypertension (69.3% vs. 21.1%), to be obese (44.4% vs. 15.9%), to have elevated triglycerides (42.9% vs. 16.0%), and to have a depressed HDL-cholesterol (23.1% vs. 10.6%).
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Almost 1 in 4 Australians 25 years and over has either diabetes or elevated blood sugar that is not quite in the range of diabetes (called “pre-diabetes”). Pre-diabetes is associated with substantially increased immediate risk of heart disease as well as increased risk of diabetes in the future.
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Increased television viewing was shown to be strongly related to both obesity and the metabolic syndrome.
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Approximately 16% of the population had some form of kidney damage present and were therefore at risk of renal disease, which consumes 5.7% of the health care budget.