ResearchSubbu: November 2021

More than 422Million people have diabetes in the world as of now mostly in low and middle income countries. Though Diabetes is found to be one of the leading causes of deaths, still enough awareness, medication & care is missing. To promote the awareness about Diabetes Mellitus, every year on 14^th November, a global campaign is conducted by International Diabetes federation and World Health Organization (WHO). As the insulin was discovered 100years back, this year the theme is “Access to Diabetic Care: If not now, when?”

This COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of testing. It holds good for Diabetes also. As per WHO, “half of the all the adults with Type-2 diabetes are undiagnosed”. So they think they are perfectly fine. Unless & until tested, we won’t come to know our blood sugar levels. Unless it is known, it can't be controlled by taking suitable medicines or insulin. Testing of diabetes is done by measuring the blood glucose levels at lab or personal monitoring with the help of a glucometer.

Normal values

Fasting plasma glucose < 110 mg/dl

HbA1C < 6%

2hrs plasma glucose (after ingestion of 75gm oral glucose load) < 140 mg/dl

Diabetes Mellitus

Fasting plasma glucose > 126 mg/dl

HbA1C > 6.5%

2hrs plasma glucose (after ingestion of 75gm oral glucose load) > 200 mg/dl

https://www.nhp.gov.in/disease/digestive/pancreas/diabetes-mellitus

https://www.who.int/diabetes/publications/Definition%20and%20diagnosis%20of%20diabetes_new.pdf

HbA1 is the three month’s average of the sugars in the blood. HbA1 is nothing but Glycated hemoglobin, which is the sugar-hemoglobin linkage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycated_hemoglobin

The access to – awareness, psychological support, healthy diet and physical activity, lab-tests and self- monitoring, oral medicines & insulin are key elements in managing Diabetes.

As it is a life style disease, changes in the life style will being the changes in the level of the disease.

Please go through my previous blogs related to diabetes & health:

https://researchsubbu.blogspot.com/2016/04/dynamic-or-diabetic.html

http://researchsubbu.blogspot.in/2015/09/test-for-best.html

http://researchsubbu.blogspot.in/2015/05/whose-wealth-is-our-health.html

Please go through the following for in-depth understanding about various aspects of diabetes.

References

https://worlddiabetesday.org/resources/wdd-2021/posters/

https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-diabetes-day/2021

https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-diabetes-day/2021/key-messages

https://www.who.int/news/item/12-11-2021-new-who-report-maps-barriers-to-insulin-availability-and-suggests-actions-to-promote-universal-access

https://www.who.int/health-topics/diabetes#tab=tab_1