Dr. Davis is one of San Francisco's finest house call specialist physicians and has been providing house calls and office visits to the Bay Area since 2005. His practice is built upon the philosophy that excellent customer service and excellent patient care go together. Dr. Davis works out of a charming 100-year-old Victorian home, and he believes that healing should begin when you walk in the door. While trained in modern medicine, Dr. Davis also has a deep appreciation of cultural anthropology, the natural sciences, and philosophy all of which he integrates with his medical practice. Dr. Davis received his MD from the University of Florida and completed his Family Practice residency at Lehigh Valley Family Practice. He has also lived, studied, and traveled abroad extensively, including for one year in Beijing, China, where he studied and practiced the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.
JUSTIN C. K. DAVIS, MD: Hi. My name is Dr. Justin Davis. Today, I will be talking about type II diabetes. Now, diabetes is a kind of disease where you are unable to regulate your sugar control or to use it properly. There are 2 kinds of diabetes, type I and type II, while similar in that you are unable to use insulin properly are very different kinds of diseases. Type II diabetes, which used to be known as adult-onset diabetes is a preventible but chronic condition that affects the way that your body utilizes glucose or sugar which is your body's fuel source. Type II diabetes is often preventible, but unfortunately due to the epidemic of obesity in the United States, not only it is on the rise among adults but also among children. Now, when you have type II diabetes, your body is resistant to insulin that helps to regulate the glucose or sugar absorption and use. The other cause can be if your body is unable to produce enough or adequate supply of insulin to be able to do the same thing. So, why is it so much on the rise? Well, again, it is directly contributable to the growing rise of poor diet, high amounts of calories, and obesity in United States; and this used to be a condition that was only seen in older adults; and now, we see it even in small children. It is very important to avoid diabetes or to treat diabetes if it is present because the effects can be so deleterious on so many parts of the body. Over time, most of the body systems may shut down and people with diabetes are very prone to all kinds of diseases including heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, eye disease, erectile dysfunction, you name it; if you have diabetes for a long time, you are probably prone to getting it. So, what are some of the symptoms to look for with diabetes? Well, with type II diabetes, you are unlikely to get it unless there is a very strong family history, unless you are significantly overweight or have a BMI (body mass index) that is far above what it should be. When you do first start developing symptoms of diabetes, often, there may be no symptoms at all but as the sugar levels rise and get higher and higher, you may experience symptoms such as extreme thirst, frequent urination, headaches, weakness, what is important is that once it is diagnosed, it is treated early. The treatment can sometimes be as simple as changing your diet and getting more exercise and losing all of the extra body weight and this can actually cause a reversal of the disease but when this is impossible for various reasons, then there are medicines that can be given to help you better regulate your glucose use and when this is not enough, then sometimes extra insulin will have to be given. So, to prevent this disease, remember it is very important that you start your children early in having healthy diets and healthy exercise regimens; no more couch potatoes and no more potato chips; and remember that this is something that will affect your child and you for the rest of their life, so there is no time like the present. Get healthy.
Member Comments
by peskyeskie on March 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM
There are thousands of Viet Nam Vets, that because of exposure to agent orange, find themselves with type II Diabetes. I'm sure like me, most of them hate being thrown into the catagory of obese lumps of coal spending inordinent amounts of time in front of the boob tube. Although we did not receive awards and medals for our wounds, we are left with a debilitating disease that can out last the affects of some gun shot wounds. I don't mean to take anything away from my Brothers that were wounded in combat, but please, understand that some of us received this disease doing duty to God and Country and will live with it for the rest of our lives. As far as it being preventible in our case, the only way we could have prevented it would to have been to desert and flee to Canada and left the outcome to a bunch of know it alls.
by peskyeskie on March 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM
Who let this squirll out of his cage, Not all type II Diabetes is attributable to being an obese couch potato. Like so many thousands of my fellow Veterans who served unselfishly in Viet Nam, exposure to Agent Orange was the cause of our type II Diabetes. Now you would have the world believe that we all sat around eating bon bons and watching Gomer Pyle for hours on end. Your very attitude is perhaps a chief reason why more Vets don 't seek treatment because of the maligned stigma associated with this "preventible disease". The only way we could have prevented it would to have been to flee to Canada to avoid Service and to go on to get our Medical degrees. Wake up, you do a great injustice and dis-service by painting us all with the same broad brush!