ON THE COVER Dr Sarah Jarvis – Diabetes
My Weekly’s favourite GP from TV and radio writes for you
We’ve an epidemic of diabetes in the UK. Numbers have doubled in 15 years with 2.7 million people living with diabetes. Knowing you’re at risk lets you access help to stay healthy and avoid complications.
When I was a medical student in the 1980s, type 1 diabetes was the one we focussed on. It has nothing to do with lifestyle – it’s an autoimmune condition where your body’s own immune system turns on itself. It usually starts in childhood or young adulthood, and most often presents with dramatic symptoms that develop quickly. Rapid weight loss, intense thirst, passing lots of urine and sometimes collapse.
Back then, type 2 diabetes was thought to be much less serious. It comes on later in life and in the early stages, symptoms are often mild – a bit more thirsty, needing to pass water a bit more often, minor boils and recurrent thrush. For the first few years blood sugar can be controlled with diet and lifestyle, with tablets as needed.
Little did we know then how we underestimated the impact of type 2 diabetes.
One of the most serious short term risks of type 1 diabetes is ketoacidosis – your blood sugars rise dangerously high, causing collapse and lifethreatening illness. This virtually never happens in type 2 diabetes. But in recent years we’ve realised quite how much type 2 raises your risk of heart attack and stroke. Like type 1, it also increases the chance of damage to your eyes (with the risk of blindness), kidneys
EVERYONE WITH DIABETES IS OFFERED ANNUAL EYE SCREENING – BUT DID YOU KNOWYOUR OPTICIAN CAN SPOT SIGNS BEFORE YOU’RE EVEN DIAGNOSED?
(kidney failure) and nerves (leg pain and amputations).
In recent years, there’s been an explosion in type 2 diabetes in the UK, and 90% of those with diabetes now have type 2. Rates for some of the complications of diabetes have doubled in just 5 years, and we now spend 10% of the NHS budget on diabetes, up from 5% a decade ago.
So no, type 2 diabetes is very much not “the mild kind of diabetes” we thought it was.
Fortunately, as knowledge of the complications has progressed, so have medical developments on preventing them. Keeping blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and weight well controlled can improve your chance of avoiding long term complications.
Taking control of your condition, to avoid complications, has never been easier, but to access this help you need to know you have diabetes. And because the symptoms of type 2 are often very mild at first, many folk put their tiredness down to the normal stresses and strains of life. That means there are about ½ a million people in the UK who have type 2 diabetes and don’t know it. Still more have “pre-diabetes” – where a change of lifestyle could actually stop you going on to get it. Type 2 diabetes is closely linked to weight – the more you weigh, the greater your chance of getting it, especially if you carry excess weight around your midriff. It often runs in families too, so if other people in your family have type 2 diabetes, you should be on the look-out for signs. You’re also at higher risk if you’re of South Asian origin.
While many people today are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in their 40s or even 30s, it’s still more likely with age. If in doubt, check it out – your GP will be happy to help. Next week: Looking After Our Men
LIFESTYLE CHANGES, WITH REGULAR EXERCISE, A HEALTHIER DIET AND WEIGHT LOSS IF YOU’RE OVERWEIGHT, CAN CUT YOUR RISK OF TYPE 2 DIABETES BY OVER 50%!