Introduction to Diabetes-to the patient

As it's reaching close to Diabetes Awareness Month, I thought it would be important to start talking about all of what entails on being a diabetic.  I thought that people could take their medications and trouble wouldn't arise, but I learn that it's not always picture perfect.  Now, there's a lot that is with being a diabetic, so I thought to break it down to a series of posts just so it's not too overwhelming and the posts won't be too terribly long.

Some statistics from ADA (I'm directly quoting their statistics):

• Prevalence: In 2015, 30.3 million Americans, or 9.4% of the population, had diabetes.
• Approximately 1.25 million American children and adults have type 1 diabetes.
• Undiagnosed: Of the 30.3 million adults with diabetes, 23.1 million were diagnosed, and 7.2 million were undiagnosed.
• Prevalence in Seniors: The percentage of Americans age 65 and older remains high, at 25.2%, or 12.0 million seniors (diagnosed and undiagnosed).
• New Cases: 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes every year.
• Prediabetes: In 2015, 84.1 million Americans age 18 and older had prediabetes.
• Deaths: Diabetes remains the 7th leading cause of death in the United States in 2015, with 79,535 death certificates listing it as the underlying cause of death, and a total of 252,806 death certificates listing diabetes as an underlying or contributing cause of death.

Now, you may be wondering what's the different between diabetes.  Here we go, Type 1 diabetics are mostly people who generally started having diabetes from a young age.  Their main treatment is through insulin.  Type 2 diabetics are people who generally lost the function to be able to break down sugars (before it used to more prevalent in elderly patients, but now it's starting to seep into young people due to obesity and other factors).  Most treatment options for Type 2 diabetics are oral medication but if it's really uncontrolled, then insulin treatment would start.  Pre-diabetics are people who are on the verge of becoming diabetic, but with proper changes, they could become not diabetic.

According to the statistics, a lot of people that's going undiagnosed, so the major question is how can we make sure all the diabetic patients are being cared for and what can we do to prevent diabetes.  Yes, you just read that correctly, this disease (Type 2 diabetes) can be prevented (now if you tried everything, you tried everything, it's inevitable).  

So how can we prevent diabetes you may ask?  I think the first thing to ask is 'do I have risk factors for diabetes?"

Risk Factors (from ADA guidelines):

• Overweight (BMI .85th percentile for age and sex, weight for height .85th percentile, or
• weight .120% of ideal for height) 
• Maternal history of diabetes or gestational diabetes during the child’s gestation 
• Family history of type 2 diabetes in first- or second-degree relative 
• Race/ethnicity (Native American, African American, Latino, Asian American (BMI of 23 and above is a risk factor for this group), Pacific Islander) 
• Signs of insulin resistance or conditions associated with insulin resistance (acanthosis nigricans, hypertension, dyslipidemia, polycystic ovary syndrome, or small-for-gestational-age birth weight) 

I think the most important thing to do if you have one of these risk factors is to look at your dietary lifestyle first to see what kind of diet you have. If you have a lot of carb (simple carbs mostly like sugar, certain rices and noodles)  that's in your diet, you may want to rethink about what you're eating.  Now, I know that it's going to be a hard decision to make, but if you want to think about your health, it's a good decision to make to do diet modification first cause it's honestly the cheapest thing about this whole entire process.  You don't have to cut out everything at once, it can be gradual just to help with the process.

Common of symptoms of diabetes:

• having the need to pee a lot
• having the need to drink a lot

If you have any symptoms, I would recommend to go to the doctor and bring up this concern.

Any additional questions, don't hesitate to reach out!