Kare about Health

Every 20 seconds. That’s how often someone is diagnosed with diabetes. That means that within the past week,  over 120,000 friends, family members and colleagues will be told they have the disease.

You may have seen the recent headlines about the new study published yesterday in the journal  Diabetes Care. Just in the next 25 years, the diabetic population in this country is projected to nearly double from a current 23.7 million to 44.1 million! The costs of health care for diabetes-related conditions is expected to nearly triple from $113 billion to $336 billion (2007 dollars) during that same 25 year period. These are scary projections indeed!

And this is assuming the percentage of Americans who are obese stays the same! So, that makes these estimates fairly conservative! The prevalence of obesity has risen steadily for many years. The authors of the study predict that obesity levels will top out at 30% in the next decade and possibly decline slightly to about 27% by 2033.  Kramer and colleagues reported that about 62% of American adults with Type 2 diabetes are obese and about 21% are morbidly obese.

So, one of the best ways to help control or even eliminate your Type 2 diabetes is to lose weight.

Costs

According to the American Diabetes Association:

$174 billion: Total costs of diagnosed diabetes in the United States in 2007

• $116 billion for direct medical costs
• $58 billion for indirect costs (disability, work loss, premature mortality)

After adjusting for population age and sex differences, average medical expenditures among people with diagnosed diabetes were 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes.

Here are some of the complications associated:

Eyes

Most people with diabetes will get some form of retinopathy, a disorder of the retina.  People with diabetes have a higher risk of blindness than people without diabetes.

Feet

People with diabetes can develop many different foot problems. Even ordinary problems can get worse and lead to serious complications. Foot problems most often happen when there is nerve damage, also called neuropathy, which results in loss of feeling in your feet. Poor blood flow or changes in the shape of your feet or toes may also cause problems.

Although it can hurt, diabetic nerve damage can also lessen your ability to feel pain, heat, and cold. Loss of feeling often means you may not feel a foot injury. You could have a tack or stone in your shoe and walk on it all day without knowing. You could get a blister and not feel it. You might not notice a foot injury until the skin breaks down and becomes infected.

Nerve damage can also lead to changes in the shape of your feet and toes. Ask your health care provider about special therapeutic shoes, rather than forcing deformed feet and toes into regular shoes.

Amputation

More than 60% of nontraumatic lower-limb amputations occur in people with diabetes.

Skin

Diabetes can affect every part of the body, including the skin. As many as 33 percent of people with diabetes will have a skin disorder caused or affected by diabetes at some time in their lives. In fact, such problems are sometimes the first sign that a person has diabetes.

Some of these problems are skin conditions anyone can have, but people with diabetes get more easily. These include bacterial infections, fungal infections, and itching. Other skin problems happen mostly or only to people with diabetes. These include diabetic dermopathy, necrobiosis lipoidica diabeticorum, diabetic blisters, and eruptive xanthomatosis.

Blood Pressure

High blood pressure — also called hypertension — raises your risk for heart attack, stroke, eye problems, and kidney disease. As many as 2 out of 3 adults with diabetes have high blood pressure.

Stroke/Heart Disease

If you have diabetes, you’re much more likely to have a stroke, heart disease, or a heart attack. In fact, 2 out of 3 people with diabetes die from stroke or heart disease.

HHNS

Hyperosmolar Hyperglycemic Nonketotic Syndrome, or HHNS, is a serious condition where your blood sugar levels rise, and your body tries to get rid of the excess sugar by passing it into your urine. If you don’t drink enough liquids  you can get dehydrated. If HHNS continues, the severe dehydration will lead to seizures, coma and eventually death. HHNS may take days or even weeks to develop.

Gastroparesis

Gastroparesis is a disorder affecting people with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in which the stomach takes too long to empty its contents (delayed gastric emptying). The vagus nerve controls the movement of food through the digestive tract. If the vagus nerve is damaged or stops working, the muscles of the stomach and intestines do not work normally, and the movement of food is slowed or stopped.

Kidney Disease

Kidneys are remarkable organs. Inside them are millions of tiny blood vessels that act as filters. Their job is to remove waste products from the blood. Sometimes this filtering system breaks down. Diabetes can damage the kidneys and cause them to fail. Failing kidneys lose their ability to filter out waste products, resulting in kidney disease.

Peripheral Arterial Disease

Peripheral arterial disease, also called PAD, occurs when blood vessels in the legs are narrowed or blocked by fatty deposits and blood flow to your feet and legs decreases. If you have PAD, you have an increased risk for heart attack and stroke. An estimated 1 out of every 3 people with diabetes over the age of 50 have this condition. However, many of those with warning signs don’t realize that they have PAD and therefore don’t get treatment.

What can you do to help prevent or control diabetes:

Exercise

Exercise burns calories, which will help you lose weight or maintain a healthy weight.

Exercise is an important factor in controlling diabetes

Regular exercise can help your body respond to insulin and is known to be effective in managing blood glucose. Exercise can lower blood glucose and possibly reduce the amount of medication you need to treat diabetes, or even eliminate the need for medication.

Exercise can improve your circulation, especially in your arms and legs, where people with diabetes can have problems.

Exercise can help reduce your cholesterol and high blood pressure. High cholesterol and high blood pressure can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

Exercise helps reduce stress, which can raise your glucose level.

It can lower your risk for heart disease, reduce your cholesterol levels and your blood pressure.

In some people, exercise combined with a meal plan, can control Type 2 Diabetes without the need for medications.

The No. 1 thing is to exercise and keep a healthy weight. But even if your weight isn’t ideal, you don’t need to lose a lot to see results. In one well-designed study, people who combined 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise with 5 percent to 10 percent weight loss had 58 percent less chance of developing diabetes.

That means you don’t have to lose a lot of weight or run marathons to drop your risk. Brisk walking, dancing or swimming once a day qualifies as moderate exercise.

Diet/Supplements

In a new study, individuals at risk of type 2 diabetes significantly reduced their chances of developing the condition by taking the diabetes drug metformin and adhering to a diet-and-exercise program, according to Dr. William C. Knowler and colleagues on the government’s Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group.

A so-called Mediterranean diet — rich in nuts, whole grains, fruits, vegetables and healthy oils — reduces the likelihood that patients recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes will need drugs to lower their blood sugar, according to a report in the Sept. 1 edition of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Cinnamon, resveratrol, olive oil, vitamin C have all been shown in various studies to improve diabetes. There seems to be some evidence that a raw diet can stave off diabetes as well.

Genetics plays a part as well

Type 2 diabetes is a progressive condition. When someone is first diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, the cornerstones of management are often, initially, what many health-care professionals term “diet and exercise,” or, more appropriately, “lifestyle changes.” In other words, a person in the early stages of Type 2 diabetes may be able to control his blood glucose levels nicely by following a carbohydrate- and calorie-controlled meal plan, losing some weight (if necessary), and fitting regular physical activity into his or her schedule. At this stage of the game, the body is still making enough insulin, and healthy eating and activity help the body use its own insulin quite efficiently.

Over time, however, diabetes progresses, and lifestyle changes simply aren’t enough anymore to control blood glucose levels. At this point, a person with Type 2 diabetes will likely need to start taking medicine in addition to continuing with those healthy lifestyle changes. Medicine is usually in the form of one or more diabetes pills. Many people with Type 2 eventually go on to require insulin.

People with diabetes often feel like they’ve failed because they have to go on diabetes drugs. The truth is that their pancreases have failed them. It’s not their fault. If you’re looking to place the blame on someone, look to your family tree. Genetics plays a big factor in who gets Type 2 diabetes and who doesn’t.

In the End

Basically, eat a healthy diet of vegetables and whole grains and good fats, maintain a healthy weight and get some exercise! Good advice for all of us!

Take care and be healthy…