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Facts of the day

Hello all,
Here are some interesting facts about Diabetes that I came across:

Morbidity and Mortality

Deaths

Diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 2006. This ranking is based on the 72,507 death certificates in 2006 in which diabetes was listed as the underlying cause of death. According to death certificate reports, diabetes contributed to a total of 233,619 deaths in 2005, the latest year for which data on contributing causes of death are available.

Complications

Heart disease and stroke

• In 2004, heart disease was noted on 68% of diabetes-related death certificates among people aged 65 years or older.
• In 2004, stroke was noted on 16% of diabetes-related death certificates among people aged 65 years or older.
• Adults with diabetes have heart disease death rates about 2 to 4 times higher than adults without diabetes.
• The risk for stroke is 2 to 4 times higher among people with diabetes.

High blood pressure

• In 2003–2004, 75% of adults with self-reported diabetes had blood pressure greater than or equal to 130/80 mmHg, or used prescription medications for hypertension.

Blindness

• Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults aged 20–74 years.
• Diabetic retinopathy causes 12,000 to 24,000 new cases of blindness each year.

Kidney disease

• Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, accounting for 44% of new cases in 2005.
• In 2005, 46,739 people with diabetes began treatment for end-stage kidney disease in the United States and Puerto Rico.
• In 2005, a total of 178,689 people with end-stage kidney disease due to diabetes were living on chronic dialysis or with a kidney transplant in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Nervous system disease (Neuropathy)

• About 60% to 70% of people with diabetes have mild to severe forms of nervous system damage.

Amputation

• More than 60% of nontraumatic lower-limb amputations occur in people with diabetes.
• In 2004, about 71,000 nontraumatic lower-limb amputations were performed in people with diabetes.

Waking Up

Have you ever woke up thinking that your blood sugar is really high and it's not? That happened to me the other day. I woke the other day feeling awful so I took my blood sugar to see what it was. It was 123. So I asked myself, "Why do I feel awful?" My theory is that my blood sugar shot up really high in the middle of the night and then peaked and started to slowly come back down. This happens a lot when you eat fatty foods. I'm in college right now so it's really hard for me to avoid having a high fat, unhealthy college diet. I also checked for ketones to see if I was right. If you feel like you have ketones, even if your blood sugar is fine, check anyways. I had a trace amount. So I took the appropriate actions to treat my ketones like drinking water and staying inactive. Within an hour my ketones had passed.

Fact of the Day

Every 24 hours:
4,100 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed
810 die from diabetes
230 people with diabetes will have a diabetes-related amputation
120 new patients will require kidney dialysis or transplant
55 will go blind

Stomach Virus

Hello everyone,
Sorry I havn't been posting. I caught an aweful stomach bug and was in the hospital for half a day. I thought I was dying! It is called Gastroinyoridis. Apparently, it is a form of the stomach flu that has nothing to do with the influenza flu. It usually lasts 24-48 hours and can is contracted from food. The weird thing is that it is not food poisoning. Mine only lasted about 14 hours because I have had it before. If you are diabetic and have something like this, the most important advise I can give you is to check your blood sugar often!!! This is important because usually when a diabetic gets sick, their blood sugar could get out of control. You don't want your blood sugar to get too high or too low. Other than that everything is going really well. My blood sugar was high last night. I think it got high because I did not count my carbs correctly for dinner. Me and my girlfriend had dinner at Chillies with my parents last night so it also could have just been the fatty content of the food that made my blood sugar high. I wish that restuarants would have a book sitting next to the condoments at the table with all the labels of everything in each entree. That would be very helpful. I'm surprised more places havn't started to do that yet because diabetes is one of the most common diseases. Well I got to go, but I'll start posting more frequently now that I am less busy.

Been a while..

Hey everyone!
It's been a while!!! I had some tests this week that I had to study for. My diabetes is going well. I had a couple of high blood sugars in the past couple of days. My blood sugar should range from 70-150. Any higher than that can be harmful. Every diabetic is different when it comes to their thresh hold of how low or how high their blood sugar can get before they have problems. These problems can range from seizures, extreme tiredness, hunger, thirst, dry mouth, nausia, ketones, muscle aches, headaches, and diabetic coma. Sounds fun doesn't it? ;) Thankfully, my high blood sugars were no where near severe. Occasionally when I eat fast food or a really fatty meal, my blood sugar goes high and it takes a while longer for my insulin to kick in. That's what happened because I had Taco Bell that night for dinner. Other than that everything was fine. I'll make sure to update more often. :)

low blood sugar

I had two low blood sugars today! I hate the feeling when you get a low blood sugar. It's actually quite scary at times. For those of you who do not know, when you experience a low blood sugar you start to feel week, start sweating, experience severe temperature changes, loose your complexion, possibly start having double vision, and extreme shaking. I am lucky. I have never had a seizure from my blood sugars being too high or too low. I have come close though. One time when I was at Cracker Barrel with my family, my sugar got so low to the point that I had to be helped to a table so I could sit down and drink some orange juice. To this day, I have no idea what happened. I can't recall any of it. That just scares me. Also, the thought of having a low blood sugar in the middle of the night bothers me too. I am an RA at one of the dorms at my school and earlier this year a resident in one of the neighboring dorms went into a diabetic comma from a low blood sugar. If he had not been found, he could have died. It's scary to live with diabetes because it can be unpredictable at times and something may go wrong when you least expect it.

Good morning or afternoon...

I woke up a little after 11:00 this morning. Every morning, I wake up with the worst taste in my mouth and I don't know why. I also was really thirsty, so I thought my blood sugar might be high. I go check it and it's 81. I thought that was a weird. Why am I having symptoms of having a high blood sugar when my blood sugar is not high? I checked my test strip bottle's code and made sure it matched the code that was put in my meter. They both were correct. I checked for ketones and I had a trace amount. How can this be? I mean it has happened before, but why does it happen? Here's what I think happened. I think that my blood sugar shot up high in the middle of the night and I developed ketones and then my blood sugar went back down and still had that trace amount of ketones this morning. If that's the case, I need to contact my doctor and ask if I need to increase my basal rates at night or not.

Pizza!!!

Today was a stressful day, but a good day for my diabetes. I had pizza today. Usually pizza will make my blood sugar go high if I eat too much. My blood sugar was around 100-150 all day. It was a good day! I hope the same is true for tomorrow.

Sooooooooooo,
I can't sleep. I stayed up all night last night to study for an economics test. I was soooooo tired afterwards. Diabetics need sleep. I can't stay up like other people do. My blood sugar goes crazy. Today, I felt like crap! It was awful! After I got off work yesterday afternoon at around 2:15, I went back to sleep. I woke up at 9:30 at night. I set an alarm so I wouldn't get too off track on sleep, but I didn't hear it go off. I hate when that happens. So I am up and fully awake at 4:00 in the morning.

I just took my blood sugar. It was 106!!! Ever feel like your blood sugar is high and it's not or the other way around? Well right now that's happening to me. I feel like my blood sugar is high because my mouth is dry and I am so thirsty, and hungry too. I need some sleep though so I am going to go try and get some sleep. Good Night!

Introduction

Hi,
My name is Paul Weathers and I am a Diabetic. I was diagnosed on July 26th, 1994. I have lived with type one Diabetes for almost sixteen years. Diabetes is not an easy disease to live with. It requires a lot of discipline to take care of your diabetes. Yes, it has been hard living with diabetes, but I am thankful that it is treatable. This blog is going to be my diabetic journal. I am creating this blog to help myself take better care of my diabetes and also to help others take better care of their diabetes and also help educate others who do not live with diabetes and do not know much about it.