Diabetic Recipes
I have to be honest in that I had no clue that there was a Diabetes Alert Day until hearing about it over the weekend. So for 20 years (18 in which I actually had diabetes) the American Diabetes Association has made this a day to alert people about the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Now it all makes sense. It is about type 2 and I am a type 1.
I do recognize that the diabetes epidemic is truly a type 2 issue but all of us are affected and now people that type 2 diabetes affects. This day should matter and be on the minds of everyone. I will say that for many years, just hearing "type 2" instantly made me check out of the conversation.
Please hear me out and do not peg me as a "hater" of type 2's. That is not the case. I remember after being diagnosed and attending a class on diabetes. I was the youngest person in the room and pretty much everything the instructor would say she would look to me and say, "This really doesn't apply to you George." How well would you have done in school if during the entire lesson your teacher said, "Don't worry about this. It doesn't matter to you?"
Now that I am older I see that both types of diabetes need attention. Both are scary and both end with the most awful complications around. We should all speak up about it and not be afraid to educate when ever we can.
So please make sure no matter what type of diabetes you have or even if you do not have diabetes at all, that you spend some time letting others know the symptoms of diabetes and alert them to the risks.
You just may save a life or some toes!
Certainly it sometimes seems as if T1, T2, and "pre-D"/IR/IGT are different planets. (Though it sometimes seems to me that even T2 insulin users are on a different planet from oral-med and D&E T2s. Then there's Planet Atkins, Planet Willett, and Planet South Beach...)
At an ADA Diabetes Expo I attended a few years ago, the CDE presenting on management stated that for T2s, the condition *will* progress over time such that, after having lived with T2 long enough, oral meds will fail, and we *will* require insulin injections... in short, that in the end, all PWD become T1...
If that is true, then perhaps we should all educate ourselves on the entire insulin-disfunction spectrum (hypoglycemia, IR, IGT, T2, T1, T1.5/T3)...
in reference to the previous comment... just because you inject insulin does not make you T1. T1 and T2 work in completely different ways.
but george I agree that everyone should continue to educate others about the importance of diabetes and complications that could arise in the future if not controlled properly. I usually tune out T2 talk but have been trying not to... we're different but some seem to think we're all the same...