Diabetic patients at greater risk for common infections

Most of us who are diabetic are well aware of the several really serious complications and risks that we might face in the longer term, possibilities that I hate to even think about, such as the increased risk of heart disease, vision loss, kidney failure. And there are others, but they are not inevitable and the worse can possibly be avoided if we can get our blood glucose levels under control.

Perhaps less serious but uncomfortable nevertheless

Diabetes is also associated with it a number of less serious but uncomfortable ailments that can easily be ignored and neglected and go untreated, at least for a while. And some of these occur more often in the case of the diabetic whose blood sugars are out of control. Being out of control describes the situation where the glucose levels in the blood are consistently above the accepted levels, not a good situation in any event.

In an earlier article, Diabetes and Dental Hygiene, reference was made to gum diseases in the mouth, gingivitis, periodontal disease, and thrush, a form of yeast infection also called candidiasis, usually the result of the high glucose levels that provides a ready source of nutrients for the many families of bacteria or fungi that can live in our bodies but are normally kept in check by our own disease fighting immune systems. But when the immune system is weakened it allows the bacteria to take over and a result is the infection.

Balinitis, another male diabetic yeast infection

There is another yeast infection, called Balinitis, to bring to your attention. Affecting male diabetics, not well known among doctors it seems, if my own personal experience is anything to go by. When I first described my irksome condition vividly to the doctor treating me for diabetes, he seemed unsure and then decided to send me to a urologist. After inspecting me, the urologist also seemed baffled and, from his comments was, I think, concerned it might be cancer related and so he cauterized it - what an experience that was! Can you imagine it?

Cauterization is the process of burning or searing an affected area by burning with a device, I think with an electric current in my case. I won’t elaborate here, but balanitis affects the male genital area, that reference will be enough for you to recognize whether you have it and I will leave you to look it up and get the details yourself.

Anyway, showing no improvement at the time of a follow up a week or two after the cauterization, the urologist pondered a while and then decided to send me to a dermatologist, fortunately practicing in the same building, who saw me the same day. When the dermatologist made his inspection he too was puzzled, did not recognize the condition, but finally after carefully peering at the appropriate area said, “I think it must be a yeast infection” and at that gave a prescription for an ointment that did help to a degree but the condition never totally disappeared.

A year or two later, when the condition flared up again I had by then used up all the ointment and had moved to a new town with a new doctor. Also I had identified the ailment myself when reading the diabetes literature. As soon as I asked my new doctor for ointment to treat my complaint known as balinitis, he immediately knew the condition and prescribed an ointment, an anti-fungal I believe, called. Miconazole Nitrate (MCL). That ointment has been fairly effective, the condition needs to be carefully watched, but it is much better.

In spite of my own experience with doctors, I read elsewhere that the condition should be recognized immediately and that treatment can clear it up in 3 to 5 days.

Caution

Balanitis does sometimes affect non-diabetics and there are some more serious forms of the disease. There is significantly more important information available than my brief and simple description given here and I urge anyone who is concerned to check more deeply into the condition and locate the full details relating to balanitis, or any other genital ailment for that matter,

Raising awareness

My purpose with this article is to raise awareness of such ailments so that if they should occur a doctor may be consulted without delay, minimizing the effects. And to again emphasize that diabetic patients are at greater risk for several such common infections, especially if blood glucose levels are elevated beyond normal for too long a period of time, allowing creation of an environment that enhances the growth of harmful organisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses.

Do you know what type 2 diabetes is? If no, then just dig in.

Type 2 diabetes is a condition that causes the blood sugar levels to rise and fall beyond the medically accepted levels. The result is that blood which is responsible for bringing energy and food to the cells start to destroy the effectiveness of different vital body organs.

Many individuals suffering from type 2 diabetes ask whether it is a reversible disease; so the answer is yes still there are following 6 mistakes which must be avoided.

1. It is a fact that most of us have genetic predisposition towards developing this chronic condition. However it is equally true that every one with this genetic predisposition end with this chronic health issue. The reason is that not all of us choose to live a healthier lifestyle.
2. It has been noted that many people who are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes do not have a family history but as they follow unhealthy eating and lifestyle habits they are caught up by the disease. So we must make this thing clear in our heads that underlying and the most important cause of diabetes are unhealthy lifestyle habits and not the genetic predisposition.
3. Our grand parents also used to follow unhealthy eating habits but still they were not caught by type 2 diabetes. The reason is though they used to eat lot of fats, sugars and oils but at the same time they spend hours in walking and they spend an active life. Nowadays we spend hours sitting on chair, watching television and surfing internet.
4. Once you are diagnosed with diabetes; it does not mean that it is the end of life. If you will leave it untreated it may result in chronic health related complications. Uncontrolled blood sugar levels results in Neuropathy, Retinopathy and Nephropathy.
5. This is the most common mistake to not undergo a routine annual check up. Type 2 diabetes is generally diagnosed during routine annual health checkups. It is very rare that diabetes suddenly reaches at the stage where it becomes irreversible within one year. Earlier diagnosis of diabetes helps in timely treatment.
6. Many people who are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes do not follow the instructions of their health care professionals. They just think these complications can never happen to them. Some continue to drink, smoke or do not exercise.

The result of the above mentioned mistakes is that most people that could have lived a healthier, happier and productive life end with chronic medical conditions as they do not choose to live a healthier life.

So what’s your choice?

Two recent news articles announced discovery of 13 gene variants that make us susceptible to developing type-2 diabetes later in life. The point of this article is that you don’t have to be a victim of genetic variants; you may be more susceptible to some disease of aging, but you don’t have to accept it as your fate. The variants discussed are called Single Nucleotide Pair variants or SNPs. SNPs are the simplest variation that a gene can have; only one letter in the code is changed in a place that changes the molecule produced from the gene. It is like the word “confiscate” being changed to the word “codfilcate”. That letter sequence change has two SNPs in the code changed, but each involves only a single letter change, as opposed to 2 or more adjacent letters changed.

In these studies, thirteen new SNPs have been found in genes relating to glucose metabolism, blood sugar levels, insulin levels and insulin resistance. If you have one or more of these variants, they may make you more susceptible to developing the problems associated with metabolic syndrome and type-2 diabetes, but they don’t necessarily insure that you will. There are choices that minimize the probability, and these choices involve what you eat, when you eat and whether you move your body enough to keep your metabolic hardware working properly. The health science industry is hoping to benefit much with this genetic information - primarily by making drugs that will treat the symptoms of this now epidemic “disease”, which will allow us to continue eating the wrong foods and watching TV, while buying drugs-for-life to abate the symptoms.

The real cause of this epidemic is how we eat, and how we move our muscles, which strongly affects our gene expression. Our eating and exercise patterns dramatically control which of our genes are turned on and which are turned off, and are far more important than this catalog of SNPs in determining our health and fitness as we age. This is critical to understand. The most profound of recent science relates to just how dominant the influence of food and exercise is on gene expression and health or the lack thereof. If you eat primarily sugar-laden foods with altered fats or proteins, you turn on the genes required for building large fat stores and ramping up inflammation; genes that slow your metabolism, slow down thyroid and adrenal gland function, inflame your arteries, destroy your joints and shrink your brain.

The primary health-killing food culprits are:

• Refined and hydrogenated fats and oils in place of natural oils as found in seeds, nuts, fruits (such as olive and avocado) and grains.
• Manufactured food products that are loaded with sugar and high fructose corn syrup, altered oils, “flavorings”, MSG, chemical preservatives, and have natural vitamins, oils and minerals removed and replaced by synthetic pseudo-nutrients.
• The rampant use of soft drinks, diet or sugar-filled, instead of real water for liquid intake.
• Grain-finished meats and farmed fish with much lower levels of omega-3 fats than they would have if naturally feeding on their wild diet.
• Eating belly-stretching amounts of food at mealtime - every excess above needed calories promotes the expression of genes required to store calories as fat and leads to reduced ability to burn fat for energy.

When we eat also had a powerful influence on gene expression. The primary impacts of eating too frequently are elevated baseline insulin level and interruption of leptin signaling. This is a recent discovery, and not well understood. We can control our appetite by snacking between meals, so that we don’t feel compelled to gorge at meal time. The popular wisdom is that eating healthy (real) foods like nuts or fruit or vegetables (not potato chips and other junk) suppresses binging and overeating patterns. Most people who use this strategy do lose significant weight and girth, and keep it off for years. What is less understood is that this pattern leads to persistently elevated leptin and insulin in the blood, and eventually drives your metabolism toward metabolic syndrome anyway. This author is a classic example: low body fat for decades, controlled by consistent exercise and eating small, frequent meals, but eventually acquiring all the symptoms of metabolic syndrome, including high fasting blood sugar, sky high cholesterol and triglycerides and the need for a quad bypass operation in 2001 at the age of 61.

The not-so-obvious reasons for this are rigorously developed and explained in Byron Richards’ book Mastering Leptin, the 3rd edition of which was published in 2009. If you really want to understand leptin, insulin, the obesity epidemic and why we get fatter as we age, this is a great book to read carefully. His solution is very simple, and it has worked very well for this writer:

• Eat 3 reasonably sized meals per day; never eat to fullness
• Eat nothing and drink only water between meals, allowing 5-6 hours for insulin to return to baseline and the liver to supply blood sugar made from stored fats
• Make Breakfast a meal with significant protein intake
• Eat nothing after dinner or before bedtime - this is the critical time for the liver to perform its detox functions and to convert stored fat to energy for repair and restoration overnight
• Reduce carbohydrate intake, get most carbs from fibrous vegetables, not starchy sources like grains and potatoes

When you put these strategies into action, energy levels rise, appetite slackens, the brain works better and the desire for excess carbohydrates goes away. For the vast majority of people, the obesity epidemic is a matter of food choices, meal size and spacing, and lack of regular physical movement. Carrying excess body fat is for most people a fast track to rapid aging and degenerative disease. Don’t wait for the medical industry to come up with another drug to fix it - we already have the tools to eliminate the problem.

Good Living - Frank