Look, I know chronic diseases, like heart and kidney failure worry you, but sometimes when you delve deeply into something, you lose track of the basic details of blood sugar control.
Next thing you know, you’re too confused and overwhelmed to ask for advice.
Don’t worry, that’s what this article and I are for.
I will explain the rules behind chronic disease (the permanent destruction of your organs) and why you need to know all about it to succeed in keeping it from taking over your body.
What are the most common chronic diseases in diabetes?
At its most basic, chronic disease diabetes is the other organs that change their function in your body to accommodate too much sugar in your blood.
Let’s add a little more depth to that—For example, why does the heart change when you have too much sugar in your blood? Why do you dread the diagnosis: Heart Disease? What does this mean?
In most cases, your heart has modified itself to pump blood. It has enlarged. It may give itself a faster heart rate. It might decide it can’t overcome the syrup-like sugar-blood so it becomes sluggish.
Most diabetics worry about chronic kidney disease, another chronic disease of diabetes. What does this mean? It means your kidneys are losing their function to keep up. Our kidneys can take the syrup-like blood for only so long as it filters it. Pretty soon it can’t filter the blood. It’s all gunked up and we call this chronic kidney disease.
And so it is with your liver, your pancreas, your eyes, your ears, your feet, and your legs. Because there is no circulation, because the heart can’t pump, and the kidneys can’t clean or filter the blood means no oxygen is carried to your organs so they begin to fail.
And finally, for those subject matter experts among you, if your tissues can’t get oxygen, your eyes will lose sight, your ears will lose hearing and your feet and legs will feel tingling and pain. For men, erectile function sets in. These are all chronic diseases of diabetes.
If you’re only at the first level of understanding, rest assured, you will come to understand diabetes and master the disease and what works for you.
Do you want to learn more from me? Check out my blog called “Understanding Diabetes on the 4th-grade level.”
Why Should You Care About Common Chronic Diseases?
According to the World Health Organization, over time, diabetes can damage the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys, and nerves. Adults with diabetes have a two- to three-fold increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.
I’m all about you making your own decisions, and I can’t make you care about chronic diseases found in diabetes but let me give you some compelling reasons to be free from such diseases.
Chronic Disease of Diabetes is important because:
- Reason #1: You’ll save money. How? These chronic diseases not only raise your insurance premiums, but the medications to limit their damage are expensive. Trust me when I say, insurance is not paying for the newest and best medications.
- Reason #2: You’ll look and feel better like the millions of diabetics who are beating this condition every day. You’ll be confident. You don’t need to go down that same road members of your family are going down. You are able to reverse your diabetes.
- Reason #3 Once you change your daily lifestyle, eating and exercising, your energy soars, your focus improves, and people will go out of their way to support you. Most of my patients were shocked at how proud their friends and family were of them.
Important: Don’t think that just because you have been diagnosed with diabetes, you have to have other heart, eye, nerve, and kidney problems.
The truth is diabetes is very much reversible with today’s tools.
This brings me to the BIG question…Is your doctor giving you the latest tests, labs, and advice on how to reverse this disease or are they only treating your disease by looking at your blood sugar level every 3 months?
Chronic Disease Complications of Diabetes
How these diseases affect you is just as important as understanding what exactly blood sugar control is and why it’s essential.
Let me give you a real-world example:
Gail’s doctor did not really listen to her. She felt that every time she went in to see him, he spent 5 minutes with her, checked the computer, looked at her weight and her labs, gave her another pill, and left.
Gail told me she got to a point where she didn’t even want to go see him anymore. He was not very encouraging, and he certainly didn’t take an interest in her well-being.
Worse, was the fact that her dad had to have a foot amputated due to diabetes, and her brother was in stage 2 kidney failure.
Didn’t her doctor care to keep her out of these events in her own life?
So I helped Gail apply the “question technique” the next time she went to her doctor. She didn’t think it would work but I encouraged her to give it a try and see what happens.
Gail didn’t think it was possible for her to escape organ damage but here’s what happened.
Three months later, Gail is in her doctor’s office, and she pulls out these questions. Her worry stops. She begins to focus where she needs to and is reassured by her doctor that both of them working together can stop her from getting any heart, kidney, eye, or foot problems.
Check Out: Stop Chronic Diseases Associated With Diabetes
Gail is now a brilliant example of questions in action. She has mastered these questions in this free guide.
This article also helped her get her doctor to listen.
3 Tips for Getting Better Medicine
Raise your hand if you are still feeling lost about how to do this. Be honest! 🙋♀️
That’s no problem; here are some extra hints and tips to get you on your way:
- Tip #1: List the Chronic diseases you are most worried about. (See this free download for what diseases are most common with diabetes)
- Tip #2: Remember to put your most pressing questions first and limit your questions to no more than six. (Doctors will ignore them if they see too many.)
- Tip #3: Get my free set of questions here so you can know what questions my patients asked me! With this list, they came in and asked me their most pressing concerns so we could talk about them and focus on the ones that were bothering them the most.
For an in-depth look at chronic disease, infections, and diabetes treatment done well, you can get my course, Jumpstart Your Diabetes Plan to avoid chronic diseases completely.
Key Takeaways
Let’s wrap this up, shall we? The key takeaway to remember from this post is that chronic disease does not have to be a part of your life when you have diabetes.
At Patient Best, I make it my mission to get you the best, newest, and most effective diabetes treatment information so you can reverse this disease and live a life free of worry.
If you would like to have real medical information, not fads, then I’ll send you pertinent information when you download these questions you should be asking your doctor.
Pssst, you can also check out my course. It includes 5 lessons with guides and worksheets. Transcripts are included so you have everything you need to start asking for the best treatment you deserve.
Click here to Jumpstart Your Diabetes Plan, a 5-lesson course. It contains all the information I gave my patients to get their A1c back to normal and avoid chronic disease. Labs, tests, and studies your doctor should be using as a guide to help you reverse your diabetes.