Diabetes

What is diabetes?

Diabetes is a condition where the body has difficulty dealing with glucose. Diabetes prevents you body from turning your food into energy. Instead glucose stays in your blood stream, and left untreated can cause a variety of complications. Monitoring Diabetes is important to help prevent the complications.

There are two main types of Diabetes:
Type 1 Diabetes: This is usually found in young children and teenagers, but can also occur later on in life. In this instance your body does not produce insulin which converts glucose into energy. The treatment for this type is normally insulin injections.
Type 2 Diabetes: This normally occurs later on in life, and can often develop slowly, so people are often not aware that they have it. Symptoms are thirst, excess urinating, tiredness and weight loss. In type 2 your body either produces too little insulin or does not react correctly to it.

Preventing Diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes can be prevented. Diet and exercise have been found to greatly reduce the risk of Diabetes. Eating healthily and less fatty foods - The GI diet has been proven to have significant effect and can significantly reduce the risk.

Monitoring Diabetes

Successful monitoring of Diabetes can greatly reduce the risk of complications through diabetes (To find out more about these complications click on the link on this page). The aim is to find a treatment that reduces your blood sugar.

The review with the Nurse takes 20 minutes, it involves having your weight, height, blood pressure, smoking status, and some blood tests taken to measure HbA1c (which measures your average Blood Sugar over a 3 month period). It is also necessary to have your feet checked to ensure your circulation is ok.

It is also important that yearly you have your eyes checked, and for this we will refer you to the diabetic eye screening group at West Suffolk Hospital