Ask a Nurse: Got Sugar?

Pamela is an RN, MSN/Ed.

Pamela is a mother of 6 amazing children ages 11 to 24. She is a nurse educator and loves to travel overseas to work in medical clinics and teach health-related topics to schools and communities. She has been married to her best friend, Steve, for 29 years. She has many different interests including reading, writing (NOT arithmetic!), baking, teaching, and spending time with her family. She lives in central Pennsylvania with her husband and two youngest daughters.

Got Sugar?

What do you know about Diabetes, beside the recent news that Paula Deen has it? Here are some startling facts:

Diabetes affects 25.8 million people of all ages
8.3 percent of the U.S. population

DIAGNOSED
18.8 million people

UNDIAGNOSED
7.0 million people

• Among U.S. residents ages 65 years and older, 10.9 million, or 26.9 percent, had diabetes in 2010.
• About 215,000 people younger than 20 years had diabetes—type 1 or type 2—in the United States in 2010.
• About 1.9 million people ages 20 years or older were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2010 in the United States.
• In 2005–2008, 35 percent of U.S. adults ages 20 years or older had prediabetes—50 percent of adults ages 65 years or older. Applying this percentage to the entire U.S. population in 2010 yields an estimated 79 million American adults ages 20 years or older with prediabetes.
• Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, nontraumatic lower-limb amputations, and new cases of blindness among adults in the United States.
• Diabetes is a major cause of heart disease and stroke.
• Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States (american diabetes association, 2012)

What are the symptoms of Diabetes?
People who think they might have Diabetes must visit a physician for diagnosis. They might have SOME or NONE of the following symptoms:

• Frequent urination
• Excessive thirst
• Unexplained weight loss
• Extreme hunger
• Sudden vision changes
• Tingling or numbness in hands or feet
• Feeling very tired much of the time
• Very dry skin
• Sores that are slow to heal
• More infections than usual.

Nausea, vomiting, or stomach pains may accompany some of these symptoms in the abrupt onset of insulin-dependent Diabetes, now called type 1 Diabetes.

What are the types of diabetes?

Type 1 diabetes accounts for about 5% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that only pregnant women get. If not treated, it can cause problems for mothers and babies. Gestational diabetes develops in 2% to 10% of all pregnancies but usually disappears when a pregnancy is over.

What are the risk factors for diabetes?

Risk factors for type 2 Diabetes include older age, obesity, family history of Diabetes, prior history of gestational Diabetes, impaired glucose tolerance, physical inactivity, and race/ethnicity. African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, American Indians, and some Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are at particularly high risk for type 2 Diabetes.

Risk factors are less well defined for type 1 diabetes than for type 2 Diabetes, but autoimmune, genetic, and environmental factors are involved in developing this type of Diabetes.

Gestational diabetes occurs more frequently in African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, American Indians, and people with a family history of Diabetes than in other groups. Obesity is also associated with higher risk. Women who have had gestational Diabetes have a 35% to 60% chance of developing Diabetes in the next 10–20 years.

Other specific types of Diabetes, which may account for 1% to 5% of all diagnosed cases, result from specific genetic syndromes, surgery, drugs, malnutrition, infections, and other illnesses.

I, myself, had gestational Diabetes. My children were over 9 and 10 lbs except for my last child who weighed in at a very normal 7.9 lbs. When a baby is born to a mother with gestational Diabetes they often have trouble maintaining a normal blood sugar. Glucose water or very frequent feeding helps the first hours after birth. What can a person do to try to prevent getting Diabetes? I have comprised a list of the top ways to do your part in preventing Diabetes. Remember, some risk factors you cannot change, such as family history and race. Do your part on what you can change!

There is a lot of research on how to prevent Diabetes; these 5 tips seem to come up on every list:

1. Exercise! Exercise can reduce your chance of developing type 2 Diabetes. Find something active that you like to do and it will be easier to keep up with it.  Make it a family activity and encourage each other.