Diabetes Is More Dangerous Than Thought

Diabetes is thought not to be as dangerous as it is in reality, shows the results of a resent survey, which now urges the need to educate the public about the serious dangers of diabetes.

The survey was conducted by the American Diabetes Association asking people to rank various diseases on a 10 points scale. Cancer and heart disease got 9 and 10 points, but the level of diabetes danger got only 4 and 5 points. Results show that the public is not properly educated about diabetes and this may lead to lack of attention to the disease and its treatment.

Survey participants mentioned that people with diabetes live a healthy life, they look full of life, there are lots of medications and easy-to-use tests for them, and finally there is no one dying from diabetes. American Diabetes Association finds this opinion wrong and wants everyone to understand that this disease leads to numerous other diseases, which can disable the body for the rest of one's life and lead to death.

It is already proved that diabetes can lead to many other diseases such as depression, sleep disorders, stroke, heart disease, vision and hearing loss, liver and kidney diseases, and sexual function. It is also known that regular diabetes monitoring, doctoral visits, proper medication, dieting, and exercising can improve diabetes condition and help a person with the disease live a healthier life. However, regular diabetes treatment is very expensive, even for those insured. Besides, people don't really understand how serious diabetes is, thus allocating less time and attention than needed to improve quality of life.

Previously, ADA's message to public was aimed at making people understand that there is treatment for diabetes. The message did not tell how deadly the disease is because health professionals don't really want to scare the public. However, this survey results now made American Diabetes Association to think of change the form of message and educate the public how scary the disease actually is. Starting from 2009, ADA's campaign will educate people about dangerous effects of diabetes, but the campaign will still be telling that the disease is treatable.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, 24 million Americans suffer from diabetes, which is the 8% of entire US population. Most sufferers are those people who are above 60 years old - 25% of this age group suffer from diabetes. And there are about 57 million people who have blood sugar levels out of control, which indicates early signs of diabetes.

Diabetes occurs because body is unable to control blood sugar levels and use sugar to secret energy. This happens because of two reasons - either because body is unable to use insulin to resolve sugar (type 2 diabetes), or because there is a very small amount of insulin to work out sugar levels (type 1 diabetes). Type 2 is the most common form of the disease, accounting from 90 to 95% of all cases. This type mainly occurs in older people because of unhealthy lifestyle and lack of exercising. Type 1 mainly occurs in children, because immune system destroys insulin creating cells.