Maybe you have just been diagnosed with diabetes or maybe you have had diabetes for years. Perhaps a member of your family or a friend has diabetes. Whatever your situation, you need to find out all you can about the disease.
Diabetes seems to be everywhere and steadily increasing about 1 in 3 babies born in 2000 will develop diabetes in the their lifetimes. Every day, about 1,400 people are diagnosed with diabetes in the United States and there’s no country in the world is free from diabetes and its growth.
Nevertheless, in spite of these and other important challenges, we are all better prepared to deal with diabetes since 2007 than we were even a few years earlier. For example, we know now modest weight loss and increased physical activity have been shown to eliminate or at least delay the development of type 2 diabetes by 60 to 70 percent regardless of race, ethnicity, or age.
We have better ways to follow and keep track of diabetes with improved health care systems, better educational programs, less painful self-monitoring of the blood sugars, more quickly available and accurate glycosylated hemoglobin levels, ways to identify kidney problems early. Diabetes is the breakdown or partial breakdown of one of the more important of the body’s autonomic (self-regulating) mechanisms, and its breakdown throws many other self-regulating systems into imbalance. There is probably not a tissue in the body that escapes the effects of the high blood sugars of diabetes. People with high blood sugars tend to have osteoporosis, or fragile bones; they tend to have tight skin; they tend to have inflammation and tightness at their joints; they tend to have many other complications that affect every part of their body, including the brain, with impaired short-term memory and even depression.
Written by ballwilll
November is Diabetes Awareness Month. There are 20 million Americans suffering from Diabetes today and many more who may unknowingly have the disease. The Today Show highlights an 11-year-old with type 1 diabetes and her continuous glucose monitor. Her mother, who also has diabetes says, “we’re at a point where we can address the disease” and the best way to fight it is to stay aware and vigilant. www.jdrf.org
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