Be fearful of contracting the terrible disease…
Discipline is all it takes.
…but diabetes can be prevented/reversed.
I really started to be conscious about diabetes at a hospital in Miami, where I’d been transported (via air-ambulance) from Panama, a country in which I suffered a car accident in 2011, as a result of which I resulted hemiplegic, and confined, ever since, to a wheelchair.
At a hospital in Miami, a couple of times a day (Once during the day and another time at night) someone came into the room and painfully prickled one of my fingertips (I had the fingertips of my left hand, all perforated) to check if I was a diabetic.
Saying I wasn’t a diabetic was useless.
Apparently, signs of the ailment can develop on you while at a hospital.
Sometimes, the ingestion of some medicines can generate abnormal levels of glucose in the blood, ultimately resulting in diabetes.
That would explain the zeal that man at the hospital showed prickling my fingertips, in spite of my saying, repeatedly, that I wasn’t a diabetic.
Diabetes is the number one cause of chronic kidney disease (CKD). This disease is a condition where the body is unable to automatically regulate blood glucose levels, resulting in too much glucose (a sugar) in the blood.
Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects as many as 16 million Americans.
Ever since that hospital stay, and knowing about my father’s experience, I became a sort of paranoid about diabetes.
You see, my father (RIP) suffered from a mild case of diabetes, but apparently, he developed some wounds in his feet, which never healed.
So, my bad experience at the hospital in Miami, and my father’s painful episode, kind of caused on me, an extreme fear of contracting the disease, checking the level of glucose in my blood frequently, becoming very worried about getting the disease, and eliminating all sugary products from mi diet, every time my glucose level reached abnormal readings.
Diabetes affects the manner in which the body handles carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
If good care of the illness is neglected, diabetes can have serious complications. Diabetic people have a high blood sugar level. The blood sugar level is regulated by insulin — a hormone produced by the pancreas — a hormone which depends, essentially, on your eating habits.
While talking about diabetes, you may be frightened — -like I am — from the idea that you may have it. Or maybe just about the possibility that you may have it in the future.
You’d want to know if you are at risk of developing diabetes and, anxiously, you’ll be looking to find if you have any diabetes symptom.
Actually, there are no clear symptoms of diabetes. The most common symptoms of diabetes are as follows:
— frequent urination
— increased hunger
— being all the time thirsty
— feeling all the time tired; having an excessive fatigue
On the other hand, there are some other symptoms of diabetes that are prescribed as diabetes complications in fact. These symptoms are:
— tingling or numbness you may feel in your extremities;
— gums disorders;
— recurrent skin infections very difficult to heal;
— vision changes;
— hair loss… and many others.
There are three different types of diabetes.:
Type I Diabetes (juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes): The reason for type I diabetes is the pancreas inability to produce insulin.
Type II Diabetes (non-insulin dependent diabetes, or adult-onset diabetes): This diabetes is a result of body tissues becoming resistant to insulin. It is usually hereditary.
Type 2 Diabetes is more common than Type 1 Diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is a life-long disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood. Conditions associated with type 2 diabetes include hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia. Type 2 diabetes may account for about 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Up to two-thirds of people with type 2 diabetes have no symptoms.
Obesity is the single most important risk factor for type 2 diabetes. An estimated 20% of all cases of new-onset type 2 diabetes are in individuals between the ages of 9–19. The more you know about type 2 diabetes, the more you’ll be able to take the right steps to take control of your condition.
Gestational diabetes, the third type of the disease, affects mainly pregnant women. The problem with this type of diabetes is that it does not present clear symptoms. The symptoms are the common: high blood sugar, thirst, frequent urination, and hunger, as it sometimes occurs, but all of them are also common to women in the latter stages of pregnancy.
The pregnant women who are most likely to be affected by the disease will fit the following criteria:
- Overweighed
- Age above 35
- History of diabetes in the family
- Previously delivered a large baby
- Previously given birth to a baby with a malfunction or defect
- Undergone abortion in late pregnancy
Besides, if you have one or more of the factors mentioned below, you are more likely to develop gestational diabetes, if you are or become pregnant:
- Having a family history of diabetes, family being, besides yourself, one or more of your parents, a brother or a sister.
- If you had gestational diabetes in a previous pregnancy.
- If the previous baby had a birth defect
Diabetes is a serious disease.
But the startling truth is that diabetes is reversible.
Taking into account, that just by controlling the amount of sugar contained in the products that one eats, the disease can be avoided, there is no excuse really, for the existence of this dangerous, hereditary, ailment.
