Oct 28 2008
Treatment For Diabetes
Your treatment for diabetes starts with opening some channels of communication with your health professional, and keeping abreast of new advances in the field of diabetes treatments. Here’s some tips for working with your health professional and keeping up to date with the various treatment for diabetes options open to you.
Care and treatment for diabetes is individually tailored to you, based on the type of diabetes you have and how well controlled your blood glucose level and other aspectsof your health are. One of the most important aspects of your medical care and your treatment for diabetes is your annual diabetes review.
The annual review
At your annual review, your health professional assesses how well your blood glucose level is controlled and checks for any signs of the long-term complications of diabetes. You have the same routine tests that were carried out shortly after your diagnosis. Tests for long-term complications will be described in another article.
It is important to recognize that your annual review should be an exchange of information and it’s fine to offer your own ideas about your diabetes management.
In reviewing your treatment for diabetes, your health professional can offer both medical and psychological help and can:
- Give you information about your type of diabetes and whether you need any changes to your diabetes treatments
- Listen and support you if you are finding it difficult to stay motivated about managing your diabetes.
- Discuss the implications of your diabetes on your work, family and social life and help you to work out how to overcome potential problems.
- Provide information about how often you need appointments with a health professional and how you can get in touch between visits.
- Explain which other health professionals you might need to see and why
- Ensure you have a written record of plans made during your visit.
It’s often necessary to see your health professional more than once a year. This may be related to changes in your treatment for diabetes, problems with a high or low blood glucose level, or because you need to review other aspects of your care.
Long-term complications
The complications of diabetes can cause damage slowly over a period of years without any sign that they are doing so. Complications are largely caused by a consistently high blood glucose level, which slowly damages your blood circulation and nerves over years.
If you have Type 1 diabetes, you are unlikely to develop any complications within the first 10 years of diagnosis. The length of time before complications develop in Type 2 varies. Because Type 2 diabetes can go unnoticed for many years, you may have complications at the time you are diagnosed.
Types of long-term complication
Having diabetes makes you more susceptible to a number of health conditions such as:
- Depression. Day-to-day pressures of living with diabetes (and anticipating possible long term complications) may have psychological effects.
- Eye Conditions Damage can occur to the blood vessels that supply blood to the retina at the back of your eye, leading to impaired vision. Cataracts are also more common when you have diabetes.
- Kidney Conditions. Gradual damage to the kidneys’ filtering system may eventually lead to kidney failure
- Foot Conditions. Poor circulation and damage to nerves can lead to a loss of sensation in your feet and problems such as ulcers, damage to the bones of the foot, and even gangrene.
- Cardiovascular Conditions. Conditions include high blood pressure, hyperlipidemia, coronary heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease.
- Other Conditions. Injecting can cause skin conditions, and damage to the nervous and circulatory systems can cause erectile dysfunction and autonomic neuropathy.
Preventing complications with various treatments for diabetes
Because the long-term complications of diabetes are largely caused by too much glucose in your blood over a long period of time, any improvement you make in controlling blood glucose is beneficial. Eating healthily, being physically active, losing weight if you need to, and stopping smoking, also greatly reduce your risk of developing complications. It is also important to check your feet daily and seek help if you notice any injuries or abnormalities.
Other actions that improve your control are taking your daily tablets and/or insulin correctly, attending your annual review and keeping your knowledge of the various treatment for diabetes options up-to-date.
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