“Diabetes And The Eye”- 5 ways Diabetes affects your eyes
“Diabetes And The Eye”- 5 ways Diabetes affects your eyes and your vision Have you ever wondered why your diabetologist asks you to get your eyes checked? That’s because diabetes can affect your eyes and cause disturbances in your vision. Some of the eye conditions caused due to diabetes are irreversible and hence a regular eye check up is recommended once a year for all diabetics. The most important step to keep your eyes healthy should be a strict control of your blood sugars. Various studies have proven that diabetes control is the single most effective way to postpone, if …
Women and Diabetes
Women and Diabetes Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. They have different roles to play. Man the “protector” and woman the “child bearer”. Since their biology is different, they fare differently in disease states especially chronic diseases like diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and heart disease. In childhood, girls usually have type1 DM while type2 DM is generally present in adults. PCOS – Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, an insulin resistant state can adversely affect body image and menstrual cycles during adolescence. Young girls become obese, depressed and have altered metabolic profiles. This can affect their fertility and married life. Marriage itself is …
Nutrition Food Labels: How to read them?
Nutrition starts when you buy food items and what we look at primarily is the labels on these items.When we buy food items from the market or mall, we see a panel on the cover called “Nutrition Facts” indicating the dietary components in the food product. An understanding of the labeling procedures of “diabetic food” is very important as it allows the diabetics to introduce these products in their meal plan. Usually these foods would contain substitutes of sugar and fat and this substitution is routinely due to make the products “SUGAR FREE”, “LOW FAT” OR “ZERO CHOLESTEROL”. What do we …
Maintaining Hygiene “Down Under”: Genital Hygiene in Diabetes
Patients of Type I and Type 2 Diabetes are at a higher risk of developing infections. Some infections are exclusively found in diabetics while some others may be found to be recurrent or of elevated severity in diabetics. Many a times, it is found that “prutius vulvae” or “purutis scroti” I.e. the itching of the vulva (external part) of the female genitals) or scrotum is one of the presenting symptoms of diabetes. Urinary tract infections are common in patients with uncontrolled diabetes, autonomic neuropathy (damage of nerves that control everyday functions like blood pressure, bladder voiding etc) and bladder obstruction. …
Hypoglycemia OOps !! Sugars Too Low
What to do when the sugars go down Hypoglycemia -needs action on the fast track Just last week, Mrs. Jyoti who is on insulin therapy for long-standing type -2 diabetes brought we her monitoring chart Date Fasting Pp 22/9/2016 80 130 25/9/2016 60 151 30/9/2016 58 122 2/10/2016 70 144 Do you have sleepless nights ? or early morning headaches ? or dreams and nightmares? I asked her. She immediately responded that for the last month she had severe headaches in the mornings and she felt better after taking breakfast. Mrs. Jyoti had nocturnal hypoglycemia or low blood sugars …
Bone Loss, Menopause And Diabetes
In women, menopause is the time when the female hormones namely Estrogen and progesterone decreases sharply secondary to the aging of the ovaries. This sudden fall in sex hormones causes abrupt changes in the function of many systems of the body. Men, on the other hand, have a gradual fall in the testosterone and andropause is generally slow and so unnoticed. Sex hormones have a tremendous influence on bone formation. Bone loss or Osteoporosis can happen secondary to a decrease in the bone material or matrix which has many proteins and collagen forming the skeleton of bony architecture. It could …
Snoring: Obstructive Sleep Apnoea
Normal sleep consists of 4 phases: Falling asleep – Very deep sleep – REM (rapid eye movements) – Awakening or Arousal. 4-6 cycles of these phases every night give sound sleep with a fresh feeling on awakening. These normal cycles are disturbed when the brain does not get enough oxygen secondary to obstruction to breathing during sleep. Normally the pharyngeal muscles are taut and contracted during the wakeful state. During sleep like all skeletal muscles of the body, the pharyngeal muscle gets flaccid. In obese individual or in short neck people, this flaccidity can obstruct the air passage causing repeated …
Types of Diabetes
In the past we understood only two types of Diabetes – Insulin Dependent also earlier named as Juvenile Diabetes in Young and Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetes in older people. With the alarming rise of diabetes in India and globally, we are now seeing younger and younger diabetic patients, so the question of whether they are Type 1 or Type 2 DM is a challenge to diagnose and requires a good history, proper examination, and few investigations. We are also now classifying other types which classically do not fit into these. Type 1 diabetes or Insulin-dependent Diabetes: Type 1 diabetes is an …