Diabetes: Reducing Risk, Increasing Awareness

This post was written by Leah Pope, a health educator at the East Liberty Family Health Care Center.

These days it's hard to find someone who doesn't know a person suffering from diabetes. Diabetes is a major problem affecting countries worldwide, none more so than the US. Nearly ten percent of the US population has diabetes, but despite the growing number of people affected by the disease, many don't know exactly what diabetes is, what it does, or how debilitating it can be if it isn't managed.

There are several different types of diabetes: type 1 diabetes, previously known as juvenile onset diabetes, is when the body fails to produce insulin (the hormone needed to carry sugar into the body’s cells); gestational diabetes, which affects pregnant women; type 2 diabetes, previously known as adult onset diabetes, where the body stops responding to the insulin being made. In every case, the sugar in the bloodstream is unable to access the cells, forcing the sugar to remain where it is instead of going where it needs to be.

In my mind, diabetes is personified by one of The Shining’s Grady twins. After all, a little extra sugar in the bloodstream sounds about as frightening as a little girl does. In reality, diabetes can be extremely damaging. It can lead to hypertension, stroke, blindness, amputation, organ failure, and death, among other things, and it does so without much warning.

Diabetes is known as a silent killer. It affects people of all genders, all ethnicities, and across all ages. Moreover, the symptoms of diabetes include urinating often, feeling thirsty, hungry, fatigued, and having blurry vision. Because these symptoms are typical in everyday life, diabetes can go unnoticed and undiagnosed for a long time. 27.8% of people with diabetes don't know they have it until it's too late.

Suddenly that little girl in the hotel hallway doesn’t seem so harmless.

As the health educator at East Liberty Family Health Care Center, I know how difficult adapting to life with diabetes is. Many people who come through our doors have bigger concerns than a disease that isn’t affecting their health at that moment. Understandably, they’d rather put their money toward buying food for their family than diabetic medication. They’d rather spend the time caring for their family than monitoring blood sugar and planning meals. And no one wants to expend the emotional energy it takes to have diabetes at all.

Thankfully, there are services aimed toward making diabetics’ health a priority. At East Liberty Family Health Care Center, I’m excited to be organizing group medical visits and support groups for diabetic patients, to assist people making the lifestyle changes necessary to manage diabetes, and to be partnering with a local optometrist to catch diabetic retinopathy before it can cause blindness. Diabetes is a problem that affects millions of people in the US and I believe with awareness and diligence from the individual, the doctor, and the eager health educator AmeriCorps member, diabetes is a problem we can tackle.