DR. PONDER: Make managing health a priority
Ponder is located at Lone Star Diabetes and Endocrinology in Odessa.
Long term diabetes complications include a long list of possibilities beyond the commonly known eye, kidney or nerve problems. If you have diabetes and no complications right now, consider yourself fortunate. But even if you do have them, there are ways to manage them to reduce their impact on your quality of life.
Most diabetics behave like anyone else when they get disturbing news about a complication: they don’t want to accept it. Denial is powerful force and can prevent you from taking the next steps to make things better. The comedian Tracy Morgan recently received a kidney transplant that was the result of years of neglect and denial of his diabetes. If your doctor has discovered a problem connected to how long you’ve had diabetes, it might be quite treatable and far less costly than an organ transplant. So let thoughts of “not me” pass right out of your mind when you hear unsettling news. You need to keep your can-do attitude intact to meet the challenge that a diabetes complication represents.
There are very effective steps a diabetic can take to slow down or stave off the onset of diabetes complications. First of these is keeping your blood sugars under the best control you can. Next, keep on top of your blood pressure and make sure it is also under good control. This means cutting back on excess salt, regular exercise, controlling weight, and perhaps medications prescribed by your doctor. Too many diabetics also have uncontrolled high blood pressure which only accelerates the onset of many serious diabetic complications.
High levels of fat in the blood in the form of triglycerides and cholesterol allows hardening of the arteries a better chance of setting in. For this reason, careful attention to avoiding or reducing intake of foods high in saturated fats and grease are very helpful to a diabetic, in addition to medications to lower the levels of these fats in the blood if lifestyle changes don’t get the job done.
Now let’s have a quick reality check on diabetes complications and what can be done for them if they still happen.
Blindness is much more likely to happen to a diabetic who has not gotten ongoing eye checkups with careful attention to the retina, the vision sensing part of the eye. Retinal damage usually takes years of diabetes to happen. Increased pressure inside the eye (glaucoma) can also happen sooner. The simple act of getting a yearly dilated eye checkup can reduce the risk of blindness from these two problems since it allows problems to be discovered early, at a more treatable stage. But even if you neglect regular checkups, your eye doctor may still have several effective methods to preserve your vision.
Kidney failure is very common in diabetics. But like eye disease, not enough people get screened for the early signs of this problem, when more can be done to slow it down. There are medications that can help slow down kidney breakdown in diabetes. These have been around for decades. While the thought of kidney dialysis is not appealing, many diabetics with kidney failure are young enough to receive a kidney transplant in the worst case scenario and still live an active, productive life afterwards.
Nerve damage due to long term diabetes often is the most aggravating since both numbness and painful nerve damage can occur. The same preventative principles apply for this complication, namely improved diabetes control. But medications to manage the perception of pain or numb sensitive areas may be needed.
Sexual dysfunction happens to many diabetic men and women. Treatments are available to manage both and minimize the impact on daily living. The greatest barrier to treating this complication is how well the doctor or patient are willing to bring it up during a clinic visit.
