Last week, Forbes reported that a good half of the estimated 21
million adult Americans with diabetes now rate themselves as having
only "fair" or "poor" health, according to a new
report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
"People with diabetes are three times more likely than
others to say their health is flagging," the CDC report found. Which means, of course, that a great number of people in this country are headed toward a future of diabetes-related complications, including blindness, kidney failure, cardiovascular disease, and lower extremity amputation. Ouch!!
Why should this be the case in a World Power nation like the USA? Poor quality and in many cases poor availability of health care are certainly issues. And perhaps more importantly, the fact that our health care system is focused on the treatment end, rather than prevention. HMOs stand more to gain from patients once they've developed kidney disease or retnal damage than they do from educational programs to prevent these problems. Crazy!
This brings me to why we wrote this book. Dr. Jackson, in his decades of patient interaction at the legendary Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, has seen thousands of patients struggling to get a handle on their health with diabetes. He has a lot of practical advice for them, starting with determining and understanding their own biggest health risks -- a simple matter of taking 5 standard lab tests.
Trouble is, many of the patients Dr. Jackson sees have had diabetes for years and have already developed complications by the time they've either discovered Joslin's program, or gathered the motivation to go there. The damage to their bodies is already done.
How much better off these people would've been if they'd just had some very basic health instruction early on! Why not package this golden preventative advice into a book that will serve as a hands-on guide?
Know Your Numbers, Outlive Your Diabetes helps you chart and understand the 5 most important values (your personal “Essential Health Factors”) for living a long
and healthy life with diabetes. That makes them pretty darn important! They are:
·
Hemoglobin
A1c—a measure of the average amount of glucose in your blood over the last
several months
·
Blood
Pressure—a quick, painless armband test to determine the force of blood
flow through your body
·
Lipid
Profile—a group of blood tests measuring your cholesterol and triglycerides
(another type of fat), which is used to determine your risk of heart attack or
stroke
·
Microalbumin—a
urine test that is an early indicator of kidney damage
·
Eye Exam—a
yearly exam that consists of dilating your pupil, allowing the doctor to see
the back of your eye
Now, be honest. If you have diabetes, or are newly diagnosed, when was the last time you had these tests? Do you know the result numbers? Do you know what they mean? One thing you can be sure of: If everyone tracked and acted on these values regularly, those depressing CDC results -- as reported by Forbes -- would look a lot rosier today.
Stay tuned for more tidbits from the book.
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The article focus is, naturally, Avoiding Diabetic Complications. It's titled "Nurturing Your Health Bank," (that's the online link) and you'll find it in the print version of the magazine on page 29. Drawing from the book, the article explains how to "collect your numbers" -- A1c, blood pressure, lipid profile, microalbumin, and eye exam -- and then take appropriate action to become and stay as healthy as you possibly can be. Lots of emphasis is placed on setting priorities, rather than trying to tackle everything at once.