Battling Diabetes

When you are a diabetic sick days mean much more than calling in sick to work and crawling under the covers.

Planning is the most important part of your sick day regime. More →

June 12, 2008, Reuters Health: Diabetic Weight Loss Plan Yields Long Term Success. One year later. The findings of the follow up of the Joslin Diabetes Center, Why Wait? program show that the participants of the 12-week program for Type 2 diabetics resulted in an average weight loss of 24.6 pounds and good control of blood glucose levels and blood pressure.

What is Why Wait?

The 12-week program involves exercise, dietary changes, education, counseling and adjustment of diabetes medications. Participants meet weekly and the program is insurance reimbursable. There is a monthly support session fee of $25 out of pocket.

Program components per the Joslin Why Wait? site:

• Intensive and interactive medication adjustments
• Structured modified dietary intervention
• Graded, balanced and individualized exercise intervention
• Cognitive behavioral intervention
• Group education

The dietary component portion of the Joslin Why Wait? program includes meal replacement shakes for breakfast and lunch. Snacks between meals. Dinners are from 14 menu selections from the Joslin Nutrition Guidelines. Nutritional breakdown of the meals are about 40% carbohydrate, 30% fat and 30% protein.

Additional Joslin weight notes per Why Wait? site:

• A modest weight loss of one pound every one to two weeks is advised.
• Reducing daily calories should be by 250 to 500 calories; total daily calories should not be less than 1,000 to 1,200 for women and 1,200 to 1,600 for men.
• Weight loss is different for each person and should be continued until a person reaches a target body mass index, or BMI.

Calculating target body mass index or BMI:

• Fit Watch
• Target Health
  

The exercise component portion of the Joslin Why Wait? program recommends ” A minimum of 150 to 175 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity is recommended. A target of 60 to 90 minutes most days of the week is encouraged.”

The medication component portion includes working with a diabetologist to reduce or eliminate medications that interfere with weight loss. It is includes more frequent glucose monitoring. Medications are adjusted weekly based on your personal results.

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Know Your Medications

This is a topic that bothers me quite a bit. Here of late I discovered that my mother, who I have talked about as being diabetic, was receiving medication she did not need. When she moved here from North Carolina, I took her to a doctor’s office I trusted, as the one she had been using for years had just struck me as very unprofessional. She would be in and out of the hospital for things that made no sense. Her doctor did not seem to have a good grip on what a diabetic needed. This has been bothering my husband and I for years.

On her very first visit to the new doctor, we found out she was receiving two medications that were not for the ailments she had complained of. One medicine she had been prescribed for acid reflux, it turns out it was only normally prescribed for nausea. Another medication she had been given that was not recommended for diabetics as it can cause very high glucose levels. The medication actually warns that diabetics can suffer from this on the packaging.

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Causes and Symptoms

If you are diabetic and have neuropathy, then you are familiar with the painful, burning, and sometimes tingling sensation of neuropathy. Neuropathy is thought to be caused by a loss of blood supply to nerves in the body. This is a dangerous condition and can caused fatalities. Nerves affected can be any of those in the human body, including the nervous system that is associated with internal organs, such as the heart, lungs, and liver.

In some cases, the neuropathy can give a diabetic the appearance of someone who has had a stroke. Drooping in the face, mainly around the eyes and mouth can occur. Difficulty swallowing, speech impairment, vision problems, and erectile dysfunction are only a few of the problems caused by neuropathy. More →

Losing Weight Is A Struggle

If you are a diabetic, you know how hard it is to lose even a pound. According to a doctor I spoke with several years ago at Moorehead Hospital in Eden, North Carolina, “Losing weight while taking insulin is a losing battle.” I wish I could remember his name, but he was the doctor evaluating my mother in the Emergency Room. Those words are not exactly his, but close enough. I wish I could find him again, this man set me on a path to regulating my mother’s diet the best I can in hopes of countering this disease.

This doctor told me that he believed diabetes could be cured by losing weight. That is how we came to the subject of how hard it is to lose weight while using insulin to control diabetes. This conversation came back to the forefront of my thoughts as I scanned recent news and found several articles speaking of women who had stopped using insulin altogether or skipped doses in an effort to lose weight.

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Avoiding the injection?

In recent years, particularly since the 1990’s, people have been looking more and more to nature to solve health issues. Almost every single day there is more information released in the news and online that details new and amazing uses for one herb, extract, or food. Often one will be touted as the ‘Wonder Cure’ for diabetes.

As of right now, there is no wonder cure-all for diabetes. With the recent breakthrough in medical science covered in my earlier post ‘Scientists Jumpstart Insulin Production In Diabetic Mice’, there may one day actually be a cure. But for now, here are the facts.

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Canadian Scientists Are Shocked

A team of scientists battling diabetes at the Hospital For Sick Children located in Toronto, Canada have surprised themselves with the sudden cure of mice suffering from the equivalent of Type 1 Diabetes. In Type 1 Diabetes, the disease usually appears in childhood and is the most serious out of the two types of diabetes. This latest discovery may permanently change the course of science in the battle against diabetes.
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The long term prospects for a person with diabetes are not set in stone. In many cases, they are a matter of choice.

There are many possible complications that come with diabetes.

Those taking insulin can experience a low glucose level. Hypoglycemia can lead to several ill effects. In extreme cases, coma is possible. At milder levels, muscle weakness or headache are common.

Diabetic acidosis may result from missing an insulin dose or as the result of infection or other cause. It can be life threatening. It’s most common in Type 1 diabetes, but may occur in those who suffer from Type 2 as well.

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Most cases of diabetes treatment are primarily in the hands of the patient. While periodic testing by a professional lab is desirable, along with regular physician consultation, the treatments themselves are typically performed by the diabetic.

Fortunately, there are more convenient and relatively painless ways to do that than ever before. While no one wants to have diabetes, the treatment options provide safe, reliable methods of self-care.

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Exactly how diabetes is treated depends on a number of factors: which type the patient has, how severe it is, the age of the patient and others.

Gestational diabetes, for example, that sometimes afflicts pregnant women at around 6-7 months into the pregnancy, may disappear after birth. Treatment may be as mild as doing nothing to additional diet management. Type 1 diabetes, on the other hand, is currently incurable and typically requires lifelong insulin shots.

But there are other forms of treatment, many of them amounting virtually or literally to self-care.

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