Myths about diabetes

WHO (World Health Organization) states there is an epidemic of diabetes. Worldwide, there are 200 million diabetes patients, not including those who do not know that they have it. In the next decade, the projected number of people with diabetes is expected to reach over 250 million.

But compared to the alarming nature of these numbers, the amount of attention paid to the disease has been relatively small until recently. This is one reason why the rise in diabetes has often been called the “Silent Epidemic”. Here are the reasons why diabetes is a horrifying disease:

First of all, it’s hard to find when you are having diabetes. If you are diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic, it may also imply that your diabetes has been developed for last 7 years of diagnosis. A number of diabetes patients state that their diabetes worsened than they expected when they visited the clinic due to chronic fatigue.

Second, there are considerable expenses related to diabetes, which possibly lead up to three times more than other diseases. Since it’s hard to be completely cured from diabetes, the expenses related to diabetes comparatively increases by years. In addition, you may need to expect spending even more if diabetes worsens with other complications. That’s why some people back in the days considered diabetes as ‘a disease of the rich’. Once you have diabetes, it comes with financial burdens to you and your family.

Third, diabetes tends to come along with complications. A stroke, retinopathy, cardiac infarction, pyelonephritis, renal failure, gangrene are most common complications of diabetes. Especially, there are many complications that are related to blood vessel disorders due to high blood glucose. These could be ended up to blindness, amputation, or death.

Fourth, it is hard to maintain once you are diagnosed with diabetes. You are required to consistently visit clinic for blood check and other screenings. Diet and exercise are also main components of managing diabetes. However, it is true that all of these are cumbersome. You do need strong will to maintain all of these remedies on schedule. Only 10% of normal population are able to succeed only with diet and exercise, and these are only the methods that slow down the progress of diabetes but neither stop nor cure diabetes. Additionally, diabetic patients need to carry hypoglycemic drugs, candies, blood glucose measuring machines, and other related bringings to manage healthy glucose level.

Due to these reasons, adults, especially who are over age of 40, are recommended to cautious about diabetes to prevent.

Diabetes is a disease of the rich?

Although it is often said “Diabetes is a disease of the rich”, it doesn’t mean only the rich (will) have diabetes. Diabetes, in fact, doesn’t discriminate people. It just means it is too costly for an individual to manage diabetic symptoms throughout his or her life, such that only the rich can cope with the financial burdens resulting from diabetes treatment. The total cost spent on managing diabetes in the US alone, whether it being direct or indirect, is estimated to be around $100 billion, which is equivalent to the total rental cost spent on all commercial properties in the US. Such a tremendous amount of money is spent on treating diabetic patients annually. As well, the medical expenses for treating diabetes is 3 times more costly than for treating other diseases. Unless you are the top 5% of income earners, you are more than likely to suffer the financial burdens associated with diabetes. That is why we call diabetes “a disease of the rich”.

Is diabetes only for older generation?

Unfortunately, the risk of diabetes has been increased regardless age group. By having higher income standards than decades ago, it has been reported that all generation are suffering from obesity, stress, drug consumption or overdose that may cause diabetes. There is no correlation between aging and the risk of diabetes

You will be FINE as along as you manage your symptoms of diabetes?

 Nowadays, even people with diabetes can live healthy normal lives as long as they keep their symptoms under control: by means of regular exercise, restricted diet, insulin injection etc. In such aspect, it will be true to say that you will be fine as long as you keep your symptoms under control. However, by no means it would be possible to cure diabetes simply by relieving the symptoms. Managing diabetes in such way would only slow the progress and bring about symptomatic relief of the disease. The root cause of diabetes would still be present in our body. Would it then be considered “OK” just by managing the symptoms? We now need to come up with a fundamental solution that can eliminate the root cause of the disease.

People with diabetes are only allowed to live with restricted diet for the rest of their lives?

We have been thinking for quite a long period time that people with diabetes must restrict what they eat for the rest of their lives. Diet restriction would remain to be their only choice to treat the disease, for they didn’t have any better choice other than healthy diet in terms of treatment. However, recent research suggest that even diabetics can be allowed to eat a variety of foods as long as they keep their eyes on their portion and calorie intake. They are, of course, advised to stay away from those high fat foods such as ham, BBQ, and pork, and high carb foods such as candy, honey, chocolate and etc. Otherwise, it is strongly recommended that diabetics must have well balanced meals full of nutritious ingredients. That being said, it is quite important to remember that restricted diet would only help slow the progress of diabetes, which means healthy diet should be considered complementary. Healthy diet itself can never cure diabetes. That is why we need a more fundamental approach when it comes to curing the disease

Beer is BAD, but hard liquor is OK?

Quite a number of diabetic patients would often quote that “Beer is BAD, but hard liquor is OK”. The reason behind making such statement would be the the fact that beer contains a high amount of carbohydrate while hard liquors do not. As plausible as it may sound however, it is in fact, quite the contrary. It is actually one of the myths, which people believe about alcoholic beverages. You would be surprised to learn that hard liquor contains about four times as much calories as beer does; that makes hard liquor more harmful than beer. In general, every kind of alcohol is very harmful to diabetics. Drinking alcohol would be especially detrimental to a diabetic patient who regularly takes one of “Sulfonylureas” to lower his or her blood sugar levels, for it may cause acute alcohol poisoning as well as severe hypoglycemia, which would obviously put the patient in danger. As well, given that diabetics usually have liver problems, drinking would also cause hepatic failure. Moreover, drinking will also minimize the therapeutic effects of certain drugs.

There is no miracle cure for diabetes?

It is fairly common for diabetic patients to hear that there is no miracle cure for diabetes. Even diabetes experts agree with this phrase so that they only suggest patients to give up to be 100% cured and rather to maintain the patients’ current status. Many patients are frustrated by this suggestion and decide not to find any cure. It’s not a good idea to think that ginseng or silkworm powder will be the cure for diabetes. However, it is also not true that there is no 100% cure for diabetes, either. There have been many researches and developments on diabetes for recent decades. Over 1500 different types of diabetes medications and supplements have been introduced internationally. Even anyone in today’s world can easily find diabetes treatments and home remedies that have good reputations with scientific proofs. However, they only affect to one or two symptoms. Also, most of them tend to show low efficacy by time or have side effects that may cause fatal kidney and liver failure or heart attacks.

The most idealistic method for treating diabetes must meet the following seven criteria.

1)       Therapeutic effects must be scientifically proven.

2)       No adverse side-effects

3)       Must not cause any unbalance in our body.

4)       Overall health improvement.

5)       Absolutely no drug resistance

6)       Not just short term symptomatic reliefs, but also Semi-permanent efficacy.

7)       Must be readily available(to general public).

Out of the above seven requirements, there have been many therapeutic drugs/supplements with some of the conditions met. However, there have been no single treatment method, which fulfills all the conditions described above. That is why many diabetes specialists have been claiming that there is no “silver bullet” treatment available for diabetics.

There are 7 elements you need to look for when searching ideal diabetes treatment.

1)       Scientifically proven

2)       Having no side effects

3)       Not only focusing on one symptoms

4)       Improves the general health status

5)       Doesn’t have a tolerance in its efficacy

6)       Not only improves blood glucose management but also has near normalcy effect

7)       Easily accessible to the public

There are some products that already meet 3 – 4 elements. However, there has been no product that has met all components. That’s why the experts have been doubtful about the miracle cure for diabetes.

Diabetes is by no means an incurable disease any more. It is now possible to cure most of the diabetic symptoms by taking high quality therapeutic drugs/supplements in conjunction with keeping healthy life styles. A number of academic researchers are beginning to realize that it is feasible to produce an ideal therapeutic solution by safely combining and processing healthful ingredients obtained from natural sources. One of the most recent research suggests that it is possible to produce a therapeutic combination that meets all the seven criteria described above.