Right Before Our Eyes?

I sometimes don't see something that is right in front of me.

For instance, this morning I was looking for some zhoug, a spicy Yemenite sauce that I like on top of cheese. I usually keep sauces in the back of the fridge, so that's where I looked. It wasn't there. Had I taken it out already? Nope. Had thieves broken into the house to steal my zhoug? Not likely.

I finally found it in the front of the fridge, right before my eyes.

Another time I spent hours looking for a book. I knew what part of the bookcase it should be in and looked and looked and couldn't find it. Did the thieves I thought took my zhoug also take Richard Feinman's book? Not likely.

I finally found it right where I'd been looking. I'd remembered that it had a white cover, but in fact it had a blue cover.

Well, what does all this have to do with diabetes? It made me wonder how many other things we think are missing are right before our eyes. Could we be looking in all the wrong places for the cause of type 2 diabetes? Is the real cause staring us in the face but we don't see it because we're expecting something else?

For decades we've been told that type 2 is caused by obesity, so the focus is there. But what if the real cause is something else, something that causes both obesity and diabetes (so they are related) but we're not seeing it because we're so focussed on weight?

I'm not sure how this concept will help the average patient; I just hope that some creative soul deciphers the puzzle so we can end this scourge before the prevalence is 100%.