MANILA, Philippines―Here is the bitter truth without the sugar coating: simply being a Filipino puts you in the risk of having diabetes.

Doctor Cynthia Rosanna Halili Manabat, past president of Philippine Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism, said that Filipinos are more prone to diabetes because of their lifestyle choices.

“First, Asians are more prone to diabetes than other ethnic groups; second, having adapted the Western “fastfood” lifestyle, more Filipinos are becoming obese; third, rice and other foods rich in carbohydrates play a central role in our diet; and lastly, Filipinos simply love to eat,” Manabat said Tuesday in a press briefing.

Manabat said that these practices resulted in the rise in the number of Filipinos diagnosed to have the disease: from 3.4 percent of the country’s population in 2003, it increased to 4.8 percent in 2008 and spiked to 5.1 percent in 2013. The doctor also said that more than four million people are diabetics but more Filipinos are unaware that they have the disease.

If diabetes remains unabated, the World Health Organization stated that by 2030, it will be the seventh cause of death worldwide.

Manabat added that if diabetes was compounded with obesity, the risk of death for the diabetic will increase by 20 to 40 percent.

In order to assuage the threat of diabetes and obesity, a new drug has been introduced in the market –Dapagliflozin.

Manufactured by AstraZeneca, the drug targets the kidney and flushes out the glucose through urine. It will also aid in weight loss and blood pressure reduction.

The drug, however, should only be used by diabetics diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus.