A study described in Diabetes Care in January 2002 showed that lowering stress lowers blood glucose. Patients were divided into two groups, one of which received diabetes education alone and the other of which received diabetes education plus five sessions of stress management. The latter group showed significant improvement in diabetic control versus the former group.
✔ Identify the source of the stress. Are you adding to stress yourself by accepting it as an unchanging part of your life or blaming others or outside events that you can’t control?
✔ Examine the way that you cope with stress now. Do you smoke, drink too much, overeat, spend too much time in front of screens, sleep too much, or overschedule yourself so you have no time?
✔ Replace unhealthy coping mechanisms with healthy ones. Avoid the stress you’ve identified or make a change in your life. Adapt to the stress or accept it. You can’t avoid your diabetes, but you can make it less stressful by following my recommendations in Part III.
✔ Take time out for fun and relaxation. Here are some of the things you might do:
● Have a picnic lunch
● Get a massage
● Take a long bath
● Work in a garden
● Play with a pet or go to the zoo
● Listen to your favorite music
● Go to a comedy show or rent a funny movie
● Stay in bed with your significant other
Many other studies have examined the different aspects of diabetes that affect quality of life. These studies show some useful information on the following topics:
✔ Family support: People with diabetes greatly benefit from their family’s help in dealing with their disease. But does having a close family help people with diabetes maintain better diabetic control? One study in Diabetes Care in February 1998 addressed this question and found some unexpected results. Having a supportive family didn’t necessarily mean that the person with diabetes would maintain better glucose control. But a supportive family did make the person with diabetes feel more physically capable in general and much more comfortable with his or her place in society.
✔ Quality of life over the long term: How does a person’s perception of quality of life change over time? As they age, do most people with diabetes feel that their quality of life increases, decreases, or persists at a steady level? The consensus of several studies is that most people with diabetes experience an increasing quality of life as they get older. People feel better about themselves and their diabetes after dealing with the disease for a decade or more. This report shows the healing property of time.
Following are some other factors that improve quality of life for people with diabetes. Though I can’t cite any particular studies here, doctors and patients alike can vouch for their importance.
✔ Blood glucose levels: Keep your blood glucose as normal as possible (see Part III for tips).
✔ Continuing education: Stay aware of the latest developments in diabetes care.
✔ Your attitude: Maintain a healthy attitude. Remember that someday you will laugh about things that bug you now, so why wait?
You wouldn’t hesitate to seek help for your physical ailments associated with diabetes, but you may be reluctant to seek help when you can’t adjust psychologically to diabetes. The problem is that sooner or later your psychological maladjustment will ruin any control that you have over your diabetes. And, of course, you won’t lead a very pleasant life if you’re in a depressed or anxious state all the time. The following symptoms are indicators that you’re past the point of handling your diabetes on your own and may be suffering from depression:
✔ You can’t sleep or you sleep too much.
✔ You have no energy when you’re awake.
✔ You can’t think clearly.
✔ You can’t find activities that interest or amuse you.
✔ You feel worthless.
✔ You have frequent thoughts of suicide.
✔ You have no appetite.
✔ You find no humor in anything.
If you recognize several of these symptoms in your daily life, you need to get some help. Your sense of hopelessness may include the feeling that no one else can help you – but that’s simply not true. First, go to your primary physician or endocrinologist (diabetes specialist) for advice. He or she may help you to see the need for some short-term or long-term therapy. Well-trained therapists – especially therapists trained to take care of people with diabetes – can see solutions that you can’t see in your current state. You need to find a therapist whom you can trust so that when you’re feeling low you can talk to this person and feel assured that he or she is very interested in your welfare.
Your therapist may decide that you would benefit from medication to treat the anxiety or depression. Currently, many drugs are available that are proven safe and free of side effects. Sometimes a brief period of medication is enough to help you adjust to your diabetes.
You can also find help in a support group. The huge and continually growing number of support groups shows that positive things are happening in these groups. In most support groups, participants share their stories and problems, helping everyone involved cope with their own feelings of isolation, futility, or depression.
Chapter 2
Making the Diagnosis with Glucose and Hemoglobin A1c
In This Chapter
▶ Seeing how glucose works in the body
▶ Identifying chronic high blood glucose with the hemoglobin A1c
▶ Reviewing the warning signs of prediabetes
▶ Testing for diabetes
▶ Getting to know actual patients and their stories
The Greeks and Romans knew about diabetes. The way they tested for the condition was – prepare yourself – by tasting people’s urine. In this way, the Romans discovered that the urine of certain people was mellitus, the Latin word for sweet. (They got their honey from the island of Malta, which they called Mellita.) In addition, the Greeks noticed that when people with sweet urine drank, the fluids came out in the urine almost as fast as they went in the mouth, like a siphon. The Greek word for siphon is diabetes. Thus we have the origins of the modern name for the disease, diabetes mellitus.
In this chapter, I cover some not-so-fun stuff about diabetes – the big words, the definitions, and so on. If you really want to understand what’s happening to your body when you have diabetes – and I know I would – then you won’t want to skip this chapter.
Realizing the Role of Glucose
The body has three sources of energy: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. I discuss