Diabetes is often called a family disease because if affects more than just the diabetes patient. If impacts the immediate family and the relationships of close friends as well.

Being diagnosed with diabetes can be a difficult thing to handle. In one fell swoop, it affects you for possibly the rest of your life. You can no longer eat your normal foods with abandon, you constantly have to test your blood sugar level, you possibly have to take medicine, and, in the worse cases, you can end up losing limbs or doing major damage to body organs.

So having diabetes is no picnic. But it's difficult for the family, friends, and other loved ones as well.

One of the first and most important changes required is a change in the patient's diet. Suddenly there are whole categories of foods that are "off the table." The patient has to learn a great deal and become familiar with procedures for planning healthy meals. He has to learn how to look at a fast food or restaurant menu and decide which foods are ok to order. And at home, if the family cook doesn't want to continuously be responsible for cooking two sets of meals, entire menu plans may change - forcing the others in the family to adjust to the diabetic's nutritional needs.

Another potential change that affects the entire family is the additional medical attention that the person with diabetes will need. Depending on the severity of the illness, the family's income situation may be impacted drastically. The family as a whole may be forced to buy cheaper foods, clothes, and other items. And if the diabetic is a child, he will probably need more attention than the other children, possibly leading to the other children feeling jealous because they are now receiving less attention.

Living with diabetes is especially difficult for teens to handle. The teen years are already difficult enough. And what teenager wants to stand out as being different from the rest? They want to be with their friends, eat what their friends eat, drink what their friends drink, and so on. And now they discover that they risk doing damage to their body and health, if they try to emulate their friend's eating habits. For a teenager, this can very easily lead to feelings of being isolated and different. And teens don't like to be different from each other.

But it doesn't have to be that way. With the right attitude, the illness can in fact strengthen relationships. This is a chance to treat the disease as a learning experience for the family by helping the family to learn and practice better dietary habits. As the entire family begins to eat healthier meals, not only is the chance of other members developing diabetes decreased, their overall health is increased as well.

This can also be used as an opportunity to strengthen friendships and discover who your real friends are. Diabetes is nothing to be ashamed about and a teenager shouldn't hide it from his or her friends. If a "friend" is willing to drop you because you are "afraid" to drink or eat the things that the in crowd is doing, then they are not truly your friend. Good friends are worth their weight in gold, and a good friend will understand and stick by you regardless of your illness.

Family support is critical in the treatment of anyone with diabetes. Children and teenagers are much more likely to be successful in maintaining healthy eating and exercise habits if the entire family and support group of friends is helping them.

The important thing is to realize that when diabetes is diagnosed, everyone has to have time to adjust to the new circumstances. And to realize that help is out there, if you need it.



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Apart from the physical effects of diabetes, it also has psychological and social effect on the sufferer even when the disease is well managed. These effects range from minor to more complicated.

Firstly, the idea of living with a disease for life can be quite shocking. It can lead to worry and anxiety. Worry in turn can lead to fear and all these can make the sufferer begin to loose interests in life and everything that makes his everyday living meaningful. For example, He might stop visiting his friends and acquaintances or stop playing the games he like and instead,"worry and worry".

When people worry, they get so depressed and this depression can affect the self- esteem greatly. It (depression) is also known to be the main cause of suicide, which is very bad. In social circles, a diabetic might feel that he is worse than others, even though its not true. This can further affect the self-esteem and make the diabetics less social. All these can affect relationships,when not well managed on the part of friends and loved ones. It has also been found that diabetics are less likely to get jobs than non-diabetics. This makes them less able to fend for themselves. All these make the quality of life, for these patients, extremely too low.

Whenever you meet them, ensure that you treat them with understanding because you might never know; it might just be in your gene waiting to pass on to your unborn children. All I am trying to say is "show love to all men and treat diabetics with care and understanding".



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Are there any real foods that diabetics actually like to eat that reverse the effects of diabetes? If you read the recent research literature on nutrition and diabetes literally, you would have to assume that the best food for diabetes is a grass-fed beef cheeseburger, on a whole wheat bun (but not two or three or four cheeseburgers at a sitting).

Really. Here's why.

Conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs) are a group of naturally occurring fatty acids predominantly found in milk and animal fat that have gained wide attention for their numerous health benefits. CLAs are found naturally in milk fat (normally about 5 mg of CLA per gram of fat, but ranging from 2 to 18 mg of CLA per gram of fat) and meat fat (particularly lamb (6 mg/g), beef (4 mg/g), and veal (2 mg/g).

The "trans-10, cis-12" form (also known as t10, c12-octadecadienoic acid), particularly abundant in cheese and hamburger, makes cells more sensitive to insulin and has the most to do with fat loss. CLAs in general act in exactly the same way on blood sugars as a group of drugs known as thiazolidinediones (TZDs), sold under the trade names Actos and Avandia.

CLAs, however, have very different "side effects." Like the drugs, CLAs lower cholesterol as well as blood sugars. Unlike the drugs, CLAs reduce body fat and encourage weight loss, even if total calorie consumption stays the same. While there are many reasons not to commend cheeseburgers as a health foods (not the least of them being that more than one study has found that are, literally, addicting), the recent scientific evidence and the widespread reports of success of low-carb, high-meat diets suggests that foods containing CLAs deserve a second look.

In diabetes, CLAs are good fats, and trans- fats are bad fats. Analyzing data collected from 65,000 women, Harvard nutritionists found that consuming trans- or hydrogenated fats "substantially" raises the risk of developing type II diabetes.

These are the fats manufacturers add to products to make them smooth and stable at room temperature. At a meeting after the paper was published, one of the researchers in the study even called type II diabetes the "cellophane wrapper disease." If it's a tasty treat that stays fresh in a cellophane wrapper, it probably contains the additives that aggravate your risk of diabetes.

Eating foods that are rich in the right fats can lower blood sugars, but eating foods with a relatively low glycemic index, like a whole grain bun, can stop sugars from ever getting high in the first place. The sugars in foods with a high glycemic index are absorbed slowly and incompletely. The sugars in foods with a low glycemic index are absorbed quickly and completely. The higher the glycemic index, the higher your blood sugars. It's no surprise that the glycemic indices of sugar, mashed potatoes, and white rice are high, but some of the index numbers for other foods are not what you would expect.

For instance, frozen French fries have a high glycemic index. If you make gourmet fries, however, you have a much healthier food. A good French fry requires peeling and cutting the potatoes yourself and soaking the fries for up to 3 days in ice water in the refrigerator. The soaking hydrates the potato so the fry cooks evenly, but the low temperature keeps the starches in the potato from breaking down. The result is a tender, tasty, never mushy fry.

Soaking also reduces the glycemic index of the fries so that your digestive system releases their sugars into your bloodstream more slowly than the sugars in whole wheat and almost as slowly as the sugars in bran or fresh fruit. If you take the time to make a really tasty and relatively healthy French fry, you will enjoy them more, but because the preparation involved, you will probably eat them less.

Similarly, all white rices are not created equal. Kalijira rice is a rice with very small grains and a delicate aroma and texture grown in Bangladesh. It is traditionally served with aromatic spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves. While it is excellent for pilafs and side dishes where the appearance of individual grains adds to the aesthetics of presentation, it is not the best rice for puddings, stuffings, or soups.

Importantly for health, kalijira rice has a high content of amylase sugars that give it a low glycemic index, that is, its sugars are released slowly by the digestive tract, making it a relatively healthy source of carbohydrate for diabetics who have room for rice in their meal plans, dieters, and endurance athletes.

And even the bun for a cheeseburger does not have the glycemic index you would expect. White bread has a high glycemic index, almost the same as sugar. A cheeseburger made with a white bread bun, hamburger, cheese, mustard, ketchup, and a pickle has about the same glycemic index as bran. The secret lies in the pickle. Pickled cucumbers have an ability to offset the "whiteness" of white bread, white rice, and potatoes.

Eating pickled cucumbers with these foods slows down the rate at which they release sugars into the bloodstream. Organic acids created in the pickling process also signal the pancreas not to release excess insulin, limiting the conversion of sugars into body fat. Fresh cucumbers do not have this effect.

I do not maintain that diabetics have to eat cheeseburgers or any of their ingredients for good health. There are good, vegan sources of CLAs. The key to controlling blood sugars is not so much what you eat, but how much you eat and what you eat it with.



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