American Diabetes Month

kirkwallhellmouth:

November is a month chosen by many organizations to raise awareness about important issues. One of those issues that effects be personally is diabetes. I have been living with Type 1 diabetes for what will be 15 years this February. Diabetes is, unfortunately, one of the health issues that’s still largely in the dark of the mainstream cultural consciousness of the US, and probably other countries as well. It’s one of those health issues that often gets trotted out as the butt of jokes because of misinformation, or is seen as “not that serious” because, hey, “at least you don’t have cancer.” News flash: people can go into remission from cancer, and many can be cancer-free for many years after finishing their treatment. Diabetes is a disease you can control, but “control” is not “remission” and there is no cure for diabetes. Most diabetics will be dealing with this disease, in some way or another, until they die. So no, it’s not cancer, but it sure as hell isn’t somehow automatically a better alternative.

Here are a list of facts about the impact of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association:

About Diabetes
Prevalence
• Nearly 26 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes.
• Another 79 million Americans have prediabetes and are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
• Recent estimates project that as many as 1 in 3 American adults will have diabetes in 2050 unless we take
steps to Stop Diabetes.

The Toll on Health
• Two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke.
• Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure.
• Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults.
• The rate of amputation for people with diabetes is 10 times higher than for people without diabetes.
• About 60-70 percent of people with diabetes have mild to severe forms of nerve damage that could result
in pain in the feet or hands, slowed digestion, sexual dysfunction and other nerve problems.

Cost of Diabetes
• The American Diabetes Association estimates that the total national cost of diagnosed diabetes in the
United States is $174 billion.
o Direct medical costs reach $116 billion and the average medical expenditure among people with
diabetes is 2.3 times higher than those without the disease.
o Indirect costs amount to $58 billion (disability, work loss, premature mortality).
o Further published studies suggest that when additional costs for gestational diabetes, prediabetes and
undiagnosed diabetes are included, the total diabetes-related costs in the U.S. could exceed $218
billion.
• The cost of caring for someone with diabetes is $1 out of every $5 in total healthcare costs.

Now, there’s also a myth that, if you just “take good care” of yourself and have good control of your diabetes, that you won’t have any complications. This is, sadly, not always the case, because no matter how much a person with diabetes tries, things can go wrong even if you’re doing everything “right.” Sometimes your body just betrays you. That’s how it goes. That’s a lot of how diabetes happens in the first place: genetic predisposition generally plays a major role in Type 1, Type 1.5, AND Type 2. Environmental factors, including some types of viruses, also play a role, and there are also other things that can increase the risk of developing diabetes.

Having diabetes means you have, automatically, a higher risk of basically all the “big name” health problems, and it means you have a higher risk of depression.

Diabetes is serious. It’s not a death sentence, but it’s no walk in the park, either. It’s not a punchline for people who don’t have the disease to use to belittle those who do.

Reblogging myself since it is November again. This is year 17-going-on-18 of my life with type 1 diabetes.

kirkwallhellmouth:

To add to something the post I just made points out (that Type 1 isn’t just for children)…

People of ALL ages can have Type 1 or Type 2 or LADA; everybody who has diabetes developed at whatever age they developed it, and then they continued to age.

Most television ads involving diabetes or diabetes medication/supplies, however, paint diabetes as involving only two age groups: children and people over 50. That’s also about how a lot of the actual literature on diabetic health and nutrition does it, too.

This leaves a HUGE age bracket in middle in a “…so what do I do?” zone. Because people who get diagnosed as kids grow up. They become young adults and then adults and have different needs than kids and older people. But as far as marketing goes? Yeah, they don’t exist as far as people who only know about diabetes from TV ads are concerned.

As someone with Type 1 diabetes who has firmly aged out of childhood and is edging toward the older end of young adulthood…it’s a weird feeling, when I stop and think about it.

NDEP | Diabetes Information, Education, and Treatment

November is American Diabetes Month. Since I’ve got education on the brain, I decided to share this resource guide. It’s geared toward making sure students with diabetes can get the most out of school while also having their medical needs met by having parents, teachers, administrators, and school nurses work together. It’s also a good general resource, and something I may draw from when introducing my students to my diabetes.

NDEP | Diabetes Information, Education, and Treatment

American Diabetes Month

November is a month chosen by many organizations to raise awareness about important issues. One of those issues that effects be personally is diabetes. I have been living with Type 1 diabetes for what will be 15 years this February. Diabetes is, unfortunately, one of the health issues that’s still largely in the dark of the mainstream cultural consciousness of the US, and probably other countries as well. It’s one of those health issues that often gets trotted out as the butt of jokes because of misinformation, or is seen as “not that serious” because, hey, “at least you don’t have cancer.” News flash: people can go into remission from cancer, and many can be cancer-free for many years after finishing their treatment. Diabetes is a disease you can control, but “control” is not “remission” and there is no cure for diabetes. Most diabetics will be dealing with this disease, in some way or another, until they die. So no, it’s not cancer, but it sure as hell isn’t somehow automatically a better alternative.

Here are a list of facts about the impact of diabetes from the American Diabetes Association:

About Diabetes
Prevalence
• Nearly 26 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes.
• Another 79 million Americans have prediabetes and are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
• Recent estimates project that as many as 1 in 3 American adults will have diabetes in 2050 unless we take
steps to Stop Diabetes.

The Toll on Health
• Two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke.
• Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure.
• Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults.
• The rate of amputation for people with diabetes is 10 times higher than for people without diabetes.
• About 60-70 percent of people with diabetes have mild to severe forms of nerve damage that could result
in pain in the feet or hands, slowed digestion, sexual dysfunction and other nerve problems.

Cost of Diabetes
• The American Diabetes Association estimates that the total national cost of diagnosed diabetes in the
United States is $174 billion.
o Direct medical costs reach $116 billion and the average medical expenditure among people with
diabetes is 2.3 times higher than those without the disease.
o Indirect costs amount to $58 billion (disability, work loss, premature mortality).
o Further published studies suggest that when additional costs for gestational diabetes, prediabetes and
undiagnosed diabetes are included, the total diabetes-related costs in the U.S. could exceed $218
billion.
• The cost of caring for someone with diabetes is $1 out of every $5 in total healthcare costs.

Now, there’s also a myth that, if you just “take good care” of yourself and have good control of your diabetes, that you won’t have any complications. This is, sadly, not always the case, because no matter how much a person with diabetes tries, things can go wrong even if you’re doing everything “right.” Sometimes your body just betrays you. That’s how it goes. That’s a lot of how diabetes happens in the first place: genetic predisposition generally plays a major role in Type 1, Type 1.5, AND Type 2. Environmental factors, including some types of viruses, also play a role, and there are also other things that can increase the risk of developing diabetes.

Having diabetes means you have, automatically, a higher risk of basically all the “big name” health problems, and it means you have a higher risk of depression.

Diabetes is serious. It’s not a death sentence, but it’s no walk in the park, either. It’s not a punchline for people who don’t have the disease to use to belittle those who do.

My sister [Linda Wallem, co-creator of Nurse Jackie] took me out to lunch before Season 2 and said, “We’re thinking about incorporating your struggles with diabetes into Thor’s character, specifically about losing your vision. How would you feel about that? We want to make it authentic, and we’re going to check with you every step of the way about how to portray this.”

Initially, the thought of reliving it all–thinking about having a scene where Jackie figures out I’m blind in my left eye, that I’ve been hiding it for everybody, and then another scene where I actually take out my eyepiece and show it to Jackie–the thought of doing that in front of 3 million strangers was horrifying. But it took half a second to realize, yes, of course I have to do this, because the challenge as an actor to do something so personal will be amazing. But also, in the bigger sense, I remembered all those years of not having a diabetic character on television to look up to or relate to, and I realized I’d just been given the chance to be that person. I never dreamed in a million years my acting career would lead to an opportunity like this.

actor Stephen Wallem in “Playing His Part,” an interview in the December 2011 issue of Diabetes Forecast

Diabetes: There’s more to it than just a man with a mustache.

Yes, the title of this post is in reference to Wilford Brimley, who to some people is best known for Liberty Medical advertisements and his particular pronunciation of diabetes as “di-uh-beet-us.” The commercial has spawned numerous cat macros, as well as continued laughter over the pronunciation. I am sure Mr. Brimley’s commercials helped many Americans, but the part where lots of other Americans have turned it into a joke? Not really helping anybody.

The trope that “X is so sweet it’s gonna give me diabetes,” when X is generally some over the top cute or twee (when it’s not food related) or when it is just really, really sugary (if it’s a food)? Not really that funny either, because it perpetuates the misconception that too much sugar causes diabetes.

It’s so much more complicated than that. There can be genetic factors, environmental factors, factors that include how a human body reacts to certain viruses, and yes, weight can be a factor. But it isn’t always.

Both Type 1 (insulin dependent–meaning a person has to give herself/himself injections of insulin using syringes, syringe pens, or an insulin pump) and Tye 2 (usually–but not always–treated with something other than insulin injections) are on the rise. Both are on the rise in children, for whom it is especially not a laughing matter.

Two major organizations that advocate for increased research into better treatments for diabetes are the American Diabetes Association (www.diabetes.org) and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (www.jdrf.org). The ADA covers both types of diabetes, while the JDRF focuses on Type 1. Both of these sites have excellent information on symptoms, treatments, and how to cope with life with diabetes no matter how old or how young someone is when they are diagnosed. They provide information on coping with health complications that can arise when blood glucose levels are not controlled (and controlling blood sugar levels is not always easy: there are so many things that can influence them, a lot of which people can’t control like stress or hormonal fluctuations), or things that people with diabetes are just at a greater risk for.

I plan to post more on diabetes during this month, as I said in an earlier post. This is a start. It can be an emotional topic for me. It’s been part of my life for almost fourteen years now, and it will be a part of my life for however many years I have to go.

November is American Diabetes Month

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I will be posting some information on diabetes, both Type 1 and Type 2, because November is American Diabetes Month. I don’t usually do much for the month, but that thing I posted earlier that was basically treating diabetes as “lol, fat people” and the interview here, which also treats diabetes–including the possible loss of body parts due to complications that can arise from having diabetes–as “lol, fat people,” have gotten me interested in spreading actual information about diabetes, which currently affects the lives of nearly 26 million American children and adults. And for a lot of those people, it has absolutely nothing to do with being overweight.