To many people, the prospect of being diagnosed with diabetes means having a crippling progressive disease that may even shorten your life and in the meantime is going to make you feel pretty awful. I think the point I would like to make is that, while we’re not going to belittle that, at all, the earlier you get the diagnosis made the less invasive or difficult the treatment will be and frankly, the whole process becomes so much easier. It’s going to be so much simpler.

So, how might you know that you might suspect signs of diabetes. Well, it can be very difficult. If you’ve got specific diabetes symptoms, if you’re drinking a lot, if you’re passing a lot of urine, if you’re feeling extremely tired, if you’re generally really quite unwell, then diabetes is certainly one of the things that you should be thinking about. But just supposing you’re saying to yourself, well, I don't know what’s going on, I just don’t feel quite as good as I did six months or year ago. I feel more tired I don’t have the energy I just don’t want to do things, well again there are many things that could cause that but diabetes could be one of them.

Now, most of us, particularly when you get to my age, find themselves going to the doctor to have things like your weight, your blood pressure and perhaps your cholesterol checked once in awhile. What I’m suggesting is that the next time you might say to your doctor, do think it’s worth checking my sugar? Because you can check sugar in the blood or in the urine extremely easily. Diabetes is one of those conditions that if you think of it, it’s very easy to diagnose and maybe it’s you who thinks of it as well as your doctor.

Posted: 15/01/2009