Dear reader,
If you have reached out to this site and are reading this article, chances are high you have diabetes or know someone who has it and need some information on this disease. And probably by the end of this article, yet another person somewhere in this world probably has learnt of his/her own diagnosis.
Talking of our own country, India has the second largest number of diabetics in the world. So even though a diabetic may ask, “God, why only me?” , you can be assured that it’s not just them alone but about 422 million people in the exact same situation in the world of which 74 million are in our own country!!! So here we can admit that this silent killer is not so silent anymore.
Diabetes is a burden at multiple levels.
Apart from the symptoms that interfere in your day to day life, like excessive hunger, thirst and urination (polyphagia, polydipsia, polyuria) , the treatment is financially draining, especially considering that it’s lifelong.
As time passes, in the absence of adequate precautions, multiple complications arise which can predominantly affect the kidney, eyes and the feet which can be debilitating, depriving not only the patient, of a normal life, but also the family around them who have to dedicate a greater chunk of their time tending to them.
(In the subsequent posts we shall focus more on the foot complications.)
And considering the larger picture, with the sheer number of patients, it can also be a burden on the healthcare system, especially if we allow complications to rear their ugly head.
But the silver lining of this cloud is that, right from the onset, to the complications, every part of it is PREVENTABLE. Right from lifestyle changes , to good glycemic (sugar) control, regular check ups and foot care, there is nothing about the progress of this disease that we cannot halt.
So do we allow diabetes to turn us into just another morbid patient adding to the healthcare burden? Or do we tackle it well enough to make it just a part of our life and not our entire life? Choice is yours….
