Diabetes - Prevention and Management by Awareness - Part 1

Can you visualize the response of a ‘healthy’ person when he finds out in a random blood test that his blood glucose is elevated? It is initially disbelief, anguish, anxiety, worry and mix of many other emotional expressions! In a few days, however, many of these feelings and expression vanish except the few ones which appear and disappear depending upon family and peer pressure regarding consuming a particular type of food or not.

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This is as much concern we have about the condition that is called ‘diabetes’ and how we take care of our selves after becoming a patient of diabetes. The little knowledge or rather lack of it regarding the high glucose condition in blood and how to respond to it and regulate it makes many people prone to becoming diabetics besides the early diagnosis in random tests. In addition to high glucose level, one must notice the symptoms as well which indicate towards the diabetic condition, some of which are mentioned in the cartoon below.

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According to International Diabetes Federation’s ‘Diabetes Atlas’, there are 382 million people suffering from diabetes globally and this number is likely to increase to nearly 600 million by 2035, which is alarming. Initially, diabetes considered a disease of rich and affluent, but now 80% of patients presently live in poor – or – middle-income nations. China and India are on the top of the chart with 98 and 65 millions sufferers, respectively. Majority of the patients are from active work force between the ages 40-60 years.

Irony is that most of these cases are preventable and/or manageable. But the lack of right education, resources and awareness plays key role in increasing the incidence of diseases. Thus, knowledge of the disease and awareness about how to prevent or delay it or live with it subsequent to diagnosis is crucial factors in fighting with this global health menace.

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Diabetes (type 1, 2 or gestational), sugar or high glucose condition, by whatever names you may know it, the common factor is increased blood glucose level even though the causes may differ from person to person.

In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas does not secret insulin, a hormone that regulates the level of glucose in blood. In type 2 diabetes, either insulin is not secreted by pancreas or if secreted it fails to function due to various reasons, one of them being insulin resistance. Insulin resistance develops due to many reasons, and obesity is one of the reasons. The gestational diabetes is a specific condition where some women develop diabetes like condition during the third trimester of their pregnancy due to increase levels of estrogen hormone. Metabolically, hormones estrogen and insulin work in opposition to each other.

Gestational diabetes, although in many cases disappears after delivery, in few cases it remains and leads to type 2 diabetes. The relation ship between the two is however not very clearly known at present.

In all these cases the insulin is either not formed or is not functional, and thus is not able to control the glucose level. So main culprit here is insulin.

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Insulin is a hormone that helps the body organs like liver, muscle and adipose tissue take up glucose from the blood after the meal. In a healthy person this is the way that carbohydrate we consume as food or drink is channeled to these organs where they are stored and utilized as and when needed by the body.

Diabetes develops from our careless lifestyle and food habits. As physical activities get narrowed down due to conveniences created by extraordinary technological advances in recent years, body’s energy requirement has drastically decreased. On the other hand our meals have become heavy, nutritious, rich in calorie and increased consumption of such food quickly makes us obese. 

Consumption of more food than the body requires for daily activities and maintenance, will lead to storage in body, which slowly but steadily results in obesity.

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Obesity is an unhealthy state as has been proven scientifically. It creates a chronic inflammatory condition in the body which acts as breeding ground for many diseases such as cancer, asthma and cardiovascular diseases, and also creates conditions like insulin resistance, which leads to diabetes.

Thus, what we eat, how we eat, when we eat and how we utilized what we have eaten determine and plays important role in our health as well as diseases. Basically, we become what we consume as our food. Personal and social eating behaviors decidedly play role in what and how much we consume. People often end up eating in excess due to individual temptation as well as family and peer pressure. Tendency to convince the self or persuade the other that one day of splurge will not matter much often lead to overeating. One incidence of indiscipline in eating makes one prone to splurge often, which deteriorates the health and leads to obesity and disease development.     

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Although some people may be genetically predisposed to develop diabetes, but awareness and vigilant dietary habit can help delay the disease development and can certainly help manage the disease and prevent health deterioration.