Diabetes Everyday

Living your best life with diabetes. Toby Smithson provides professional guidance with personal experience.

You are here: Home / Archives for Understanding Diabetes

Understanding Diabetes

New Book -21 Things You Need To Know About Diabetes And Your Heart

By Leave a Comment

I’ve always been bothered by the word “complications” as a description for the potential consequences of diabetes. “Complications” is much too mild a word for nerve pain, vision loss, sexual dysfunction, digestive problems, difficult infections, kidney failure, and the doubling of the risk for heart disease. Ultimately, it’s that hugely increased risk for heart disease that takes the greatest toll on people with diabetes, and managing those risks becomes as important as managing blood glucose levels.

constantly emphasize the importance of heart health as a part of our diabetes lifestyle. So, I am especially pleased to recommend a new book by my friend and colleague Jill Weisenberger which explains this close and important connection between diabetes and heart disease perfectly. Her book 21 Things You Need To Know About Diabetes and Your Heart (©2015, American Diabetes Association) carefully and clearly explains both the problem and the solutions to heart disease as a complication of diabetes. And, she gives you all you need to know in only 135 pages, in language anyone can understand.

Most importantly, 21 Things You Need To Know About Diabetes and Your Heart shows you exactly how effectively managing diabetes and heart health can go together is so many key ways – twice the benefit for the same effort. And, when it comes to your long term health and the quality of your life, nothing could be more important.

Decisions, Decisions- Food and Diabetes

By Leave a Comment

Any idea how many food-related decisions you’re confronted with each day? How about more than 200!! But, often we don’t even recognize those moments as an opportunity to make a different and better decision- we eat mindlessly. Interested in learning how you can eat more effectively? This video could help.
Any idea how many food-related decisions you’re confronted with each day? How about more than 200!! But, often we don’t even recognize those moments as an opportunity to make a different and better decision- we eat mindlessly. Interested in learning how you can eat more effectively? This video could help.

New Type 2 Diabetes Resource

By Leave a Comment

There’s a new online resource specifically for those with type 2 diabetes, and we thought you should know about it. Type2Diabetes.com provides a combination of educational and practical resource information, and an online community for connecting with other patients. Online communities can be extremely valuable in building a virtual group of friends who understand your challenges.

A great way to introduce yourself to this new resource might be to review the results of their survey of people with type 2 diabetes. The results offer some interesting insights you can compare with your own experiences, and the site offers a new survey question frequently. Toby helped “vet” the main survey, and you’ll find her contributing other content now and then. Enjoy.

Severe Diabetes Alert!!

By Leave a Comment

Yesterday was “Diabetes Alert Day” which urges people to take a diabetes risk test, and talk to a health care provider when their risk is shown to be high. Diabetes Alert Day looks to address the alarming estimate that more than 25% of diabetes cases have not been diagnosed (therefore, are not being treated). I couldn’t help but think how effective this campaign might be if every television ran the alert similar to a tornado warning- beep, beep, beep- severe diabetes alert!!!

The undiagnosed issue is only one element of the “severe diabetes alert.”  In 2001 the CDC published a report about the rising incidence of diabetes in the U.S. The warning was that diabetes cases in the U.S. would approach 30,000,000 cases by the year 2050. This projection is represented by the dashed blue line above. Guess what? We made it to 30,000,000 cases 37 or 38 years ahead of schedule, as illustrated by the red line based upon the most recent report filed in 2011.

Coming in ahead of schedule may be desirable in some cases, but certainly not this one. And, while there may be some qualification to the data (use of A1C for diagnosis in 2011 numbers), that would only make previous estimates higher- the projection for 2050 looks more like 100,000,000 now, and that should be startling. Diabetes is clearly a public health emergency, and some wise people consider it a national security issue (based upon the economic impact).

We have managed to make remarkable “progress” heading in the wrong direction. The question is, how do we do an about face, and make equally remarkable progress in reducing the incidence of diabetes. Changing lifestyles is the only reasonable answer, and many political and economic interests have created a stiff headwind for sure. National diabetes months and alert days are always celebrated by those of us fighting this battle every day- it’s time those in power took note of these alerts. Sound the alarm.