Diabetes Health Video

Video Transcript

DR. CATHERINE STALLWORTH: Hi. I am Dr. Cathy Stallworth, and I would like to share with you some information about diabetes. Diabetes is basically a problem in the body that occurs when the blood sugar becomes too elevated. This is typically the result of your body either not making insulin or being ineffective in its use of insulin. What insulin does is insulin helps the body to metabolize glucose or blood sugar. For most of us, blood sugar runs between 70 and 100 milligrams per deciliter. If you have elevated blood sugar, your blood sugar is going to be over 100. People between 100 and 125 are considered to have prediabetes, and anyone with a blood sugar--a fasting blood sugar of 126 or greater is considered to have diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the body does not manufacture insulin. This is most often a juvenile-onset type diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, the body becomes more resistant to insulin so you develop insulin resistance and the insulin is not as effective as helping blood sugar move into the cells. Certainly, some of the most common symptoms of diabetes are an excessive hunger, excessive thirst, frequent urination, blurriness of vision, unexplained weight loss or numbness and tingling in the hands and feet. People with type 1 diabetes who are not making insulin anymore are going to need to be treated with insulin. People with type 2 diabetes very often have some obesity associated with the diabetes. So one of the first things that I recommend to my patients is if they have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is that they get on a good lifestyle program, optimal nutrition and exercising on a regular basis. You want to keep your blood sugar as stable as you can, so one of the things you can do is avoid foods that are high in what's called glycemic index. Foods that are high in glycemic index tend to be the more processed food. Diet and exercise, if you are carrying a few extra pounds, really work on taking them off. There have been some great studies that show that this really does make a difference. Using a complimentary approach, if you've got a lot of stress in your life and that's leading to over eating, get into some things like meditation, biofeedback, a lot of these types of exercises reduce your stress. The next thing--the next level up is medication. So we've got lots of great oral medications that you can take by mouth for milder forms of diabetes, and then finally you can go into things like using insulin. The bottom line with diabetes, the more you control your blood sugar, the less long-term health problems you're going to have.