• 27Apr

    MEDICATIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH TYPE II DIABETES

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    There are no miracle medications available at the present time to rid you of your diabetes. Nor are there likely to be any medications developed to prevent or cure Type II diabetes in the next few decades.What is available to you is a wide variety of medications, not only to help control your blood glucose but also to treat the symptoms of many of the ailments that affect adults-ranging from the sniffles caused by the common cold to the aches and pains of arthritis.For most adults, these non-diabetes medications work wonders. But for you, they may work wonders on the cold °r arthritis symptoms but they may also send your blood glucose out of control.Paracelsus, a Swiss physician who lived in the Middle Ages, made the astute observation that the only difference between a drug and a poison is the dose. This statement applies in particular to you, because you have to worry about how a particular drug may affect your blood glucose, your blood pressures, and your blood fats.You also have to worry about how a particular drug might affect your organs, such as your eyes, kidneys or blood vessels – which may be already at risk of damage from your diabetes.The safest thing to do and would be to avoid all drugs entirely. But that’s not a practical bit of advice. So your alternative is to learn all you can about medications and how they affect your body, especially those parts of your body involved with diabetes.You need to get more specific information about the drugs your doctor prescribes for you or those you buy without a prescription. Talk with your doctor about the benefits and the side effects of each drug, and be sure your medical record shows all drugs you use routinely. Talk with your pharmacist before you buy any non-prescription drugs, and ask for advice on which medications will have the least effect on diabetes control.It’s always a good idea to be extremely careful with self-diagnosis and self-treatment. You owe it to yourself to check with a health professional about an ache, pain, pump, blister or other complaint before you try a home remedy or nonprescription medication – whether that’s a pill, liquid, spray, cream or ointment.*27/210/5*

  • 03Jun

    GOOD NUTRITION PLANNING: NUTRITION FOR OLDER PERSONS

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    Aging is a process that covers the entire life-span. The metabolic changes that characterize aging are poorly understood. Gerontology is the study of the aging process. Geriatrics is the branch of medicine concerned with the prevention and treatment of diseases in older persons.
    There is, of course, no specific age that characterizes a person as “old”; some people are “old” at 50 years, and others are “young” at 70 years. About 24 million people in the United States today are over 65 years old. Most of these people are productive, live in their own homes, and enjoy good health. Good nutrition, heredity, and environment play dominant roles in the maintenance of health.
    Nutritional needs
    As you well know, it is altogether too common for people to gain weight as they become older. This weight gain is explained in part by a progressively lower basal metabolism after 25 years of age. In addition, older men and women are usually less active than they were in their youth.
    The recommended energy allowance at 51 to 75 years for men is 2400 kcal and for women is 1800 kcal. The allowances for thiamin, riboflavin, and niacin are slightly lower to correspond to these lower calorie requirements. The allowances for protein and most minerals and vitamins are the same as for younger adults. Provided that she does not have an anemia, the woman who reaches 51 years can meet her iron needs with a daily intake of 10 mg.
    Problems of food intake
    People over 65 years of age are no more like one another than teenagers are like one another. The nurse is likely to encounter a great variety of problems concerned with adequate nutrition of older persons. She needs to be alert to these problems, and to use ingenuity, patience, and kindness in solving them.
    1. Inability to chew is a frequent source of difficulty because of poorly fitting dentures or absence of teeth.
    2.   Appetite usually declines in later years because the senses of smell and taste are less acute, the secretion of saliva and gastric juices may be reduced, and the satisfactions of sociability with family and friends may be lacking. Chronic disease and medications often interfere with the appetite.
    3.   Complaints of heartburn, belching, indigestion, and flatulence are frequent. Specific foods, especially fruits, vegetables, and spicy foods, are often blamed for these effects, but no firm rules can be given that apply to all persons. Thus, one individual experiences discomfort every time he eats onions, and another enjoys onions and tolerates them well. Concern for the individual would omit onion for the former and include them for the latter.
    4.   Constipation is a common problem of the older individual and is related to the reduction of muscle tone of the gastrointestinal tract and to lessened activity. It is aggravated by eating too many soft, low-fiber foods and failing to drink sufficient fluid.
    5.   Chronic diseases of the heart, kidney, circulatory system, gastrointestinal tract, and joints impose needs for modified diets or interfere with tolerance for foods and ability to manage one’s own diet.
    6.   A lifetime of poor dietary habits contributes to signs of nutritional deficiency including fatigue, anemia, fragility of bones, poor wound healing, and reduced resistance to infection.
    7.   Living alone, physical handicaps, inability to shop, poor cooking facilities, low income, frustration, boredom, and fear of the future all reduce the desire to eat or the capacity to prepare adequate meals.
    8.   Faddism and misinformation are responsible for much poor nutrition. Older people are especially likely to fall prey to the food quack that makes promises of good health, vigor, and even cure of disease.
    *80/234/5*
    GENERAL HEALTH

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  • 23Apr

    TYPES OF DIABETES

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    Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, but very few people die directly from poorly controlled diabetes or diabetic coma these days. How’s that? Consider this.

    Diabetes itself is simply your body’s inability to process the sugar, or glucose, in your bloodstream. There are two types. In type I (also known as immune-mediated diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes), your pancreas stops producing insulin, the hormone you need to get the glucose into your cells. In type II, either your pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin or your body doesn’t use it right.

    Type II is the one that you should really be concerned about. Type II’s aliases are “adult-onset” or “non-insulin-dependent diabetes” or NIDDM (the M for mellitus), and it’s by far the most common – accounting for 9 out of 10 cases.

    Fifteen million Americans have it. Eight million have it without knowing it.

    But the most impressive fact is this: Most of adult-onset type II diabetes doesn’t necessarily have to occur at all. “It’s important to know that diabetes is preventable,” says George King, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and senior investigator of vascular cell biology at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. “Or, if you have the disease, many complications can be prevented.”

    If you were to die from acute complications of diabetes such as a coma, you’d die from too much glucose in your bloodstream. And, sure enough, that’s what used to happen before the discovery of insulin in 1922. But these days, diabetics can live happily and healthily ever after, by controlling their sugar intake to avoid complications. Those who have type I diabetes can also control their glucose levels with insulin shots, and those with type II can do so with a diet and exercise regimen, usually without insulin shots. Insufficiently controlled, however, either type of diabetes leads to other diseases – and that’s where potentially fatal complications await.

    The complications of diabetes read like a chamber of horrors. Heart attack, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and kidney failure are the most frequent causes of death. Diabetes also can lead to blindness, nerve disease, gangrene, lower limb amputation, and erectile dysfunction.

    Somehow, a few minutes on a stationary bike and a strategic pass on the nachos doesn’t seem like a lot to ask to avoid all that.

    *1/36/5*

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