living with diabetes

Living with Type 2 Diabetes

A diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes can have dramatic effects on individuals and their families. When patients are diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, they are frequently faced with the need for extensive medical care for the rest of their lives.

They may need to make significant lifestyle changes, as well as face potential complications as the disease progresses. Because many patients with Type 2 Diabetes are asymptomatic, the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes can be unexpected, occurring incidentally during a routine medical exam.

In a space of a few minutes, the patient’s concept of himself or herself must undergo a radical change from an image of someone with good health to an image of someone with a chronic disease.

They are suddenly faced with an increased need for interactions with the health care system, with multiple office visits to many different health care professionals.

Emotional Impact

A diagnosis of type 2 diabetes can have an emotional impact on patients and their families. People can be apprehensive after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and their anxiety may increase as they learn more about diabetes from their health care professionals.

  • For example, patients are faced with new knowledge that they have an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, and other cardiovascular conditions and that these diseases may occur earlier and be more aggressive than people without diabetes. Thus it impacts their potential life expectancy.

Similarly, they are faced with a prospect of possibly becoming blind, losing their occupation and their economic independence, becoming dependent on others for activities of daily living, and possible developing kidney failure, which would result in the treatment with dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Diabetes and Travel: You mere need to take care of few things

In addition to these very serious consequences of type 2 diabetes, patients are also faced with other consequences that, while not usually life-threatening, can seriously impair their quality of life and functioning.

  • For example, due to decreased blood flow and nerve damage, patients with diabetes are faced with the prospect that minor trauma to their feet, which they may not be able to feel, can progress to serious infection and the need for amputation. Certain types of nerve damage can also produce symptoms such as diarrhea, constipation, and urinary bladder dysfunction.

Patients may understandably be worried about how these potential complications of diabetes will affect their ability to work, take care of their families, and socialize.

Studies have shown that diabetes can significantly impair a variety of aspects of a person’s life, including social, emotional, and physical functioning. In some patients, these concerns may result in the development of depression.

Study data demonstrate that the presence of depression in addition to diabetes can impair life even further.

Economic Burden

Diabetes is a costly disease not only because it is chronic disease, but also because it can be associated with a variety of severe complications. Costs can be categorized as;

Direct. It includes hospital and physician services, lab tests, drugs, syringes, and blood testings. Long term hospitalization due to complications of diabetes is the biggest concern in direct costs.

Indirect. It include costs from loss of productivity to sickness, absence, disability, premature retirement, or premature mortality. It can also contributes a huge amount to economic burden.

Intangible. It includes pain, anxiety, stress on relationships, loss of mobility and ability to enjoy activities, burden of treatment, and other factors that decreases the quality of life.

Smart ways to Beat Diabetes

Diabetes is your past, present, and future. Learn to beat diabetes in a smart way. Make a promise to yourself that diabetes will not stop you. You have to adopt the basic changes in your lifestyle to lead a healthy life.

Diabetes is not a curse, neither a silent killer but a blessing indeed.

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