November 14, 2010 is World Diabetes Day, and this year’s theme is “Everyone cares about diabetes”. According to information, diabetes has become the third most common disease after cardiovascular disease and tumors. Diabetes is a lifelong disease, and once you have it, you will have to deal with it for the rest of your life, and improper treatment can bring serious complications.
On the occasion of World Diabetes Day, we interviewed Professor Qian Qiuhai, a well-known diabetes expert in our province and director of the Department of Endocrinology at the Affiliated Hospital of Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
So far, diabetes lacks a cure, but as long as it is controlled well, its harm can be reduced to a minimum. So, how can you control diabetes well? Professor Qian said, as long as the treatment of diabetes “five carriages”, that is, the treatment of diabetes treatment of the five principles, you can effectively control diabetes. These five principles are: diet therapy, exercise therapy, diabetes education and psychotherapy, drug therapy, diabetes testing.
1.Scientific and reasonable diet is the root of diabetes prevention and treatment
With the gradual improvement of people’s living standard, the structure of people’s diet has also changed a lot. High fat, high protein, high sugar food intake is too much, the vitamin content of the become less, resulting in nutritional imbalance, obese people increased. On the other hand, there is the pollution of food to the body. The residues of organotin, pigment and food additives in food cause the body’s own immune function to decline and the reduction of probiotics, making people’s own resistance to disease weaken.
Therefore, regardless of whether one is a diabetic or not, one should have three meals with a reasonable and scientific distribution ratio, reduce the intake of high fat, high protein and high sugar, and increase the diet of crude fiber, high quality protein and high vitamin food to achieve the purpose of improving one’s internal environment and reducing the amount of sugar in the body. For non-diabetic patients, it is prevention; for diabetic patients, it is dietary therapy.
2, diabetic patients exercise should be “personalized
Obesity is an important factor to induce diabetes, and the increase of obese people, not only too much intake, excess nutrition, and one of the most important reasons is the reduction of exercise. A scientific and reasonable diet can only be combined with reasonable exercise to effectively control weight and reduce obesity, thus reducing the occurrence of diabetes. Another important reason is that exercise not only promotes insulin function and lowers blood sugar, but also regulates blood lipids, enhances cardiopulmonary function and promotes peripheral circulation, which plays a pivotal role in the control of diabetes.
However, exercise for diabetic patients is different from exercise for healthy people, and the amount, time and method of exercise should be “individualized”. For example, patients with poor health are not suitable for climbing mountains, winter swimming and other activities and stimulating sports, can choose to walk, play tai chi and other relatively soft sports. In addition, Professor Qian said that exercise should not only be based on physical condition, but also follow the theory of Chinese medicine to maintain health, pay attention to spring to avoid wind, summer to avoid heat, autumn to avoid dryness, winter to avoid cold.
3.Diabetes education: let diabetic patients understand diabetes correctly
Diabetes is a chronic killer, some patients are negligent when the symptoms are not obvious, let down their guard, do not know enough about the dangers, do not follow medical advice; there is another kind of patients, know that they have diabetes is “excessive attention”, especially after learning that diabetes can not be cured, they are pessimistic and disappointed, depressed, feel that the day is over, hope The hope is slim. Some carry a heavy spiritual burden, depressed all day long, frowning; some simply give up treatment, let go of the development of the disease; others even mental breakdown, light-hearted anorexia, on the road to extinction. These are extremely wrong attitude. Other patients refuse to use insulin, they think that insulin will be like a drug, after using will be addicted, the result is to delay the disease, delay the best treatment time. In fact, this is the result of incomplete or even wrong understanding of diabetes.
Professor Qian believes that it is very important to strengthen the popularization and education of diabetes knowledge. Communication between doctors and patients should be enhanced so that patients can understand its common symptoms, aggravation and complications, the latest progress in treating diabetes, etc. Let diabetic patients realize that although diabetes is not yet curable, it is completely controllable, and boost their confidence to cooperate with treatment extremely actively.
”I hope that patients do not just use the money to buy drugs, but should properly invest in some diabetes science learning, so that patients and non-patients from passive education into active learning, which is more conducive to the health of patients,” said Professor Qian.
3. Self-detection: early symptoms and complications of diabetes
The typical symptoms of diabetes are “three more and one less”, that is, eating more, drinking more, urinating more and losing weight. But in pre-diabetes, 80%-90% of type 1 diabetes “three more and one less” symptoms are not obvious, but are manifested as other symptoms: such as skin infections, oral infections for a long time; unexplained weakness, body fatigue, repeated colds, these symptoms may be the early signs of diabetes, but these symptoms are easily confused with other diseases. These symptoms can be easily confused with other diseases and should be checked for blood sugar under the guidance of a doctor.
During the period of diabetes complications, patients with diabetes should understand and grasp the characteristics, signs and clinical manifestations of diabetes complications. For example, while suffering from diabetes, if there is vision loss, blurred eyes or flying mosquitoes in front of the eyes should be considered to be diabetic fundus retinopathy; such as unexplained lower limb numbness, weakness, cramps, soreness and even pain, which can only be relieved after rest, intermittent claudication, lower limb pain or limb ulcers, gangrene, should be considered to be the performance of diabetic lower limb vasculopathy; if chest tightness, breath-holding, should be highly alert , because it is very easy to have cardiovascular lesions at night. If you want to have these symptoms, you should promptly reflect them to your doctor so that he or she can make an accurate judgment and give the appropriate treatment plan.
Professor Qian reminded that diabetic patients must not rely solely on their self-perception to judge their condition and guide their medication, but should use blood sugar and other testing indicators as a basis to guide and adjust their medication. For people at risk with a family history of diabetes, it is best to test blood glucose regularly; diabetic patients are best to test blood glucose daily; for patients with combined cardiovascular and cerebrovascular pathology, fundus retinopathy, renal pathology renal failure and other diabetic patients should pay particular attention to testing blood glucose at any time to detect hypoglycemia in time to avoid aggravating the disease.
4, personalized medication, Chinese and Western medicine and complementary advantages
Prof. Qian said that western medicine can lower sugar quickly, but not simply with medicine to lower sugar, excessive lowering of sugar will bring adverse risks to the treatment of diabetes, easily lead to hypoglycemia and easy to cause complications. He advocates the combination of drugs and non-drugs, Chinese and Western medicine, complementary advantages, diet and exercise as the basis, drug regulation as the core, diabetes knowledge education, self-testing as a guarantee, five carriage method at the same time, integrated implementation, in order to achieve the clinical purpose of effective control of diabetes.
In addition, Professor Qian told the reporter that with the clinical observation in recent years, the treatment of diabetes by combining Chinese and Western medicine has achieved very significant results. The combination of Chinese and Western medicine can achieve better individualized treatment for diabetic patients, reduce and prevent the risk of hypoglycemia, and can increase insulin sensitivity, shorten the course of treatment, and reduce the dosage of hypoglycemic drugs and insulin. In particular, it has unique advantages in preventing and treating chronic complications of diabetes. Clinical and experimental studies have confirmed the effectiveness of TCM in preventing and treating diabetic lower limb vascular lesions, cardiovascular lesions, fundus retinopathy, and renal lesions.