They say misconceptions can kill. Well, Diabetes misconceptions have killed and will continue to kill many for years to come. We know so much about diabetes. We get information from many sources. From TV, from magazines, from the internet, from a neighbor, from the barber and from many other reliable and not-so-reliable sources.

This is precisely the reason why despite the fact that we know so much, still many more keep dying from this disorder. Because we fail to filter the chaff from the grain. And if we want to avoid Diabetes complications, we have to correct our deep-seated misconceptions.

1.”I’m not fond of sweets.”

Although a penchant for sweets will hasten your membership to the Honey Club, an aversion to it does not guarantee immunity from the disorder. First of all, sugar can be found NOT ONLY in sweets. ALMOST ALL the carbohydrates we take will be converted into sucrose (table sugar) by our intestinal enzymes and ultimately into glucose (blood sugar) before being absorbed into the blood. This would include bread, rice, root crops, and even unripe fruits. So, if your attention is focused only on sweets, you’ll have been shot from behind and you’ll never know what hit you.

2. “We don’t have a history of Diabetes!”

It would be difficult to trace all our relatives up to the 4th degree. And although advances in travel have made migration easier, it has also made recognition of distant relatives more difficult, and increasingly irrelevant. Until we find the need to trace our lineage.

3. “My blood sugar was normal last year.”

With the average western diet these days, yearly blood sugar monitoring is probably inadequate to guard against the onslaught of Diabetes in any individual. And besides, by the time your blood sugar goes up, Diabetes has been doing damage to your tissues for the past 10 yrs. An increase in blood cholesterol leading to hardening and narrowing of the arteries begins years before the blood sugar even starts to go up. It’s a Trojan Horse that does the damage while you snugly sleep, oblivious to the web of complications that this illness cunningly weaves.

4. “My cuts easily heal.”

Just like in No. 3, delayed healing of wounds is a late complication of Diabetes. So why wait to be a candidate for amputation? Landmines have done enough damage to innocent lives.

5. “My urine sugar is normal.”

Sugar in the urine is an effect of “filtration overflow”. When the sugar in the blood exceeds the kidney’s capacity to filter it, the sugar overflows into the urine. So in kidneys with high filtering capacity, the urine sugar may be negative in spite of a very high blood sugar. Are you going to wait for the bucket to spill before turning off the tap?

There are many other misconceptions regarding this terrible disease. Too many, in fact to occupy too many Ezine articles. But I suppose I have made my point. And if we are able to change our notion of this terrible disease, we might be able to transform our reaction to it from that of “What’s in it for me?” to “What can we do?”.

So if we think that we are exempted from this dreaded disease, that would be another misconception. Why don’t we take more time to learn more about it? And with the right information, we might be lucky enough to indeed get exempted.