Lifestyle Changes for Prevention and Management of Diabetes
Follow
By DERON SNYDER (as published by Atrium Health)
As a provider who lives with diabetes herself, Trang Vuong, MD, an internal medicine and pediatric specialist at Atrium Health Primary Care One Health Family Medicine Matthews is passionate about sharing advice on how to best manage the condition.
“I have gestational diabetes, which I developed through pregnancy,” she says. “Fifty percent of diabetes cases involve gestation and can develop into full-blown diabetes. Genetics can also play a role. My grandmother lost both legs and was on dialysis. I saw what that was like for her, and it terrified me.”
A big focus of diabetes awareness and education is on prediabetes and preventing diabetes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 88 million U.S. adults have prediabetes, a serious health condition where blood sugar levels are higher than normal – but not high enough yet to be diagnosed as diabetes. The majority of those adults are unaware that they’re prediabetic.
Diabetes is a group of diseases that result in high blood glucose, meaning there’s too much sugar in one’s blood. The most common forms are Type 1 and Type 2. The former is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. The latter – which is the case for about 90-95% of patients – affects the way the body processes blood sugar (glucose).
Diabetes, especially if unmanaged, can lead to kidney failure, blindness, amputation, stroke, and heart attack.
“We used to think that Type 1 was ‘juvenile diabetes,” Dr. Vuong says. “But we got away from that and don’t say it anymore. Diabetes is a spectrum; you’re not born with it; it develops.”
TREATMENT AND CARE
Read more…
