Diabetes is the third leading killer in the United States. It is mainly a disease of the middle-aged and old, but it can also strike young adults, teenagers, and children. The earliest diabetes cases ever recorded appeared in a sister and brother. The girl first became diabetic at the age of four months, and later her baby brother was diagnosed with diabetes at nine days old. Diabetes kills thousands directly. But is is also responsible for the deaths of many more who seem to die of heart disease or some other cause.
Diabetics may suffer from many serious complications. High blood pressure, kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, and an inability to fight off infections bring misery to many diabetics and may shorten their lives. Altogether, diabetes and its complications account for about three hundred thousand deaths in the United States each year. About five million Americans are known to suffer from this disease, and medical specialists suspect that as many as five million more may have diabetes without knowing it. More than six hundred thousand new cases are diagnosed each year. The National Commission on Diabetes, which reported to congress in 1999, said that the disease costs the nation five and a half billion dollars each year in the expenses of caring for diabetics, and in their lost earnings.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Diabetes is not your fault
Diabetes is not your fault
You’ve just been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. If you’re like most people, you’re probably in a state of shock. When you got diagnosed with diabetes. Your doctor probably told you a lot of things about diabetes diets and drugs and insulin and glucose and carbohydrates and blood tests and avoiding this and doing that, and you probably came out of the office with your head spinning because of what the doctor said about your diabetes.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most people feel that way when they get news like this about diabetes. If no one in your family ever had diabetes, and especially if you’re thin and thought diabetes only happened to fat people, you’re probably especially puzzeled. What did I do wrong? Whey is this happening to me?
Sometimes a diagnosis comes like a thunderbolt on a sunny day. It can be had to hear this when it comes. Or maybe you were expecting a diagnosis someday. You’ve got relatives with diabetes: your grandmother had diabetes and died from gangrene in her foot. Your father got it when he was 65 and died from a heart attack a few years later. If you’re also over weigh, maybe you figured someday you’d get diabetes yourself. But you probably figured someday would be far in the future, when you sere old. Not today. Not now. I’m not ready yet. Whether you expected it or not, diabetes diagnosis is a shock.
You’ve just been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. If you’re like most people, you’re probably in a state of shock. When you got diagnosed with diabetes. Your doctor probably told you a lot of things about diabetes diets and drugs and insulin and glucose and carbohydrates and blood tests and avoiding this and doing that, and you probably came out of the office with your head spinning because of what the doctor said about your diabetes.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most people feel that way when they get news like this about diabetes. If no one in your family ever had diabetes, and especially if you’re thin and thought diabetes only happened to fat people, you’re probably especially puzzeled. What did I do wrong? Whey is this happening to me?
Sometimes a diagnosis comes like a thunderbolt on a sunny day. It can be had to hear this when it comes. Or maybe you were expecting a diagnosis someday. You’ve got relatives with diabetes: your grandmother had diabetes and died from gangrene in her foot. Your father got it when he was 65 and died from a heart attack a few years later. If you’re also over weigh, maybe you figured someday you’d get diabetes yourself. But you probably figured someday would be far in the future, when you sere old. Not today. Not now. I’m not ready yet. Whether you expected it or not, diabetes diagnosis is a shock.
Monday, December 1, 2008
My Story of Diabetes
There are a number of myths surrounding diet and diabetes, and much of what is still considered sensible nutritional diabetic advice for diabetes can over the long run be fatal. I know, because it almost cost me my life. I developed diabetes in 1991 at a very young age and for more than two decades I was an ordinary diabetic, dutifully following doctor’s orders and leading the most normal life I could, given the limitations of my diabetic disease.
Over the years, the complications from my diabetes became worse and worse, and like may diabetics in similar circumstances, I faced a very early death. I was still alive, but the quality of my life wasn’t particularly good. I have what is known as type 1 diabetes or insulin dependent, diabetes, which usually begins in childhood (it’s also called juvenile-onset diabetes). Type 1 diabetes must take daily insulin injections just to stay alive.
Years ago in the dark ages of diabetes treatment, most had to sterilize needles and glass syringes by boiling them every day, and use a test tube to test the urine for sugar. Many of the tools the diabetic can take for granted today were scarcely dreamed of back then-there was no such thing as a rapid, finger-stick blood sugar-measuring device, nor disposable insulin syringes. Still, even today parents of Type 1 diabetics have to live with the same fear my parents lived with. For any parent of a type 1 diabetic, this is a real and constant possibility.
Over the years, the complications from my diabetes became worse and worse, and like may diabetics in similar circumstances, I faced a very early death. I was still alive, but the quality of my life wasn’t particularly good. I have what is known as type 1 diabetes or insulin dependent, diabetes, which usually begins in childhood (it’s also called juvenile-onset diabetes). Type 1 diabetes must take daily insulin injections just to stay alive.
Years ago in the dark ages of diabetes treatment, most had to sterilize needles and glass syringes by boiling them every day, and use a test tube to test the urine for sugar. Many of the tools the diabetic can take for granted today were scarcely dreamed of back then-there was no such thing as a rapid, finger-stick blood sugar-measuring device, nor disposable insulin syringes. Still, even today parents of Type 1 diabetics have to live with the same fear my parents lived with. For any parent of a type 1 diabetic, this is a real and constant possibility.
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