Diabetes

Diabetes

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Watch this video!!!! Some hope Afterall

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.

Monday, April 19, 2010

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.