Diabetes Complications

Everyone feels stress, sadness, discomfort, and other emotional ups and downs as a normal part of Feeling Sad?life. However, Diabetics may tend to be more susceptible to feelings of hopelessness, despair, and just plain lethargy than others.

Many of these negative feelings come from the knowledge that they have a serious illness. Other feelings may stem from the everyday routine that Diabetics need to go through in order to stay healthy.
Here are some simple steps to help you manage your mental health:

Cnn.com reports a therapy to reduce painful "phantom limb pain" using a mirror system.

Read more:{EXT http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/03/19/mirror.therapy/index.html}Pain Relief For Amputees{/EXT}

Often diabetics who have a limb amputated are tormented by a pain sensed as coming from the missing limbs. It is believed that around 95% amputees suffer different levels of "phantom limb pain". The length of time suffered also varies.

Phantom limb pain is not well understood and is believed caused by the following:

Research indicates caffeine found in coffee, tea, caffein containing soda pops, and chocolate reduces diabetics' control of their blood sugar/glucose).

Caffeine appears to:
Prevent some cells from using insulin. This prevents glucose from entering those cells and building up in the blood;

Dehydrates the body. Dehydration causes many problems with the blood -- like causing the body to secrete chemicals that prevent some cells from getting enough water. This leads to cell stress and cell death.

I hear many concerned family members struggle with their parent or sibling that is "not taking care of their diabetes". The next question is "how do I make them do better?" Since we can't make any one do anything what does help?

The New York Times article dated October 16, 2007 gives a lengthy and provocative look at potential causes of diabetes looking more closely at the signals our body cells send and recieve. Intriguing is the possible involvement of bone hormones in the handling of glucose by the body, especially important in type 2 diabetes. Wow, first we learned about the pancreas, then the liver and muscle and until recently fat tissue directing body function and glucose management. Now bone. The closer we think we are getting to a cure the more complicated the picture gets. Righly so.

Diabetes patients are usually aware of the potential complications of their disease - heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and amputations. Yet even considering these life-threatening and disabling consequences, many patients rank sexual dysfunction high on their list of worries.

According to one study more than 44 percent of men and 27.5 percent of women with diabetes reported sexual problems.

For more on this topic, see {EXT http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18879323&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=222089&rfi=6}Arizona City News{/EXT}. For other breaking news, click on Diabetes in the News.

For people who have been diagnosed with diabetes for more than 8 years, add a urologist or urogynecologist to your medical team. Bladder dysfunction resulting from nerve damage (autonomic neuropathy) effects 40% to 80% of the diabetic population. You may not even know your bladder is not operating properly.

If you do not control your glucose levels, the sugar may damage your urinary system which includes: