EDITORIAL: The main focus towards preventing diabetes among the Bhutanese has been to create awareness and treat patients already afflicted by it.
While there is nothing wrong with that, there is a need to extend the initiative to younger sections of the Bhutanese population.
That diabetes is a lifelong illness and that, in the long run, causes severe complications like heart and kidney disease, stroke and blindness is something that many people already know about.
Perhaps, the focus should switch towards seeking solutions, than having to treat the disease long after it sets in.
Changing our lifestyles and at early stages of it could turn into leaps towards diabetes prevention in years to come.
We must change, particularly among the young, this approach to food and dietary health by educating children about food, to change the way people eat.
It is important for children to learn about food and how it affects their bodies.
Gauging from the growing number of diabetes cases in the capital city, the issue merits all the more focus than ever before.
Doctors seeing about 160 diabetic patients, both old cases returning for regular check ups and new diagnoses, twice a week at the national referral hospital, is alarming for a small nation and just as small a population.
Visit the hospital during one of the two days of the week at the hospital, and many a middle-aged and old person queue as early as 6:30am at the entrance of the hospital.
Some of them have their fingertips with an extra layer of thick, hard skin from being pinpricked for blood tests frequently.
Instances of people having to lend their toes to draw blood for tests have also been reported.
It is a gloomy scene this mundane routine of having to visit the hospital every once a month to check for diabetes and sugar levels in the early hours, waiting for several hours.
More frustrating is the restriction on basically all the food that renders one’s taste buds watery at the mere thought of which, and the pills aplenty that a diabetic has to swallow in substitute.
The lesson to draw from these experiences, watching some of our family members afflicted with such an incurable disease, is to bar that affliction from reaching the young.
It is about the choices we make today.
Whether we indulge in all the vices that present themselves in high calorie ingredients in moderation and exercise frequently, or frequent instead the hospital for regular check ups in old age.
Making a few simple changes in our lifestyle today can help avoid what causes lifelong personal and family struggles.
Diabetes is a costly and burdensome disease for families.
Diabetes 2, also known as insulin resistance, is what is called a 'lifestyle disease', meaning that it is a disease directly linked to lifestyle habits - in this case, eating habits.
ReplyDeleteAs one who mastered Diabetes 2 with a radical change of diet and of lifestyle, and without pharmaceuticals, I think I am entitled to comment.
I have visited Bhutan recently and could compare the traditional foods with what people were apparently buying an eating (witness the amount of chips, sweets and drinks packages to be found on roads and paths). Of course it is easier to buy and eat a pack of chips or a sweet than to pare, wash and cook vegetables and rice (or whatever). Of course it tastes better (an aspect which is often disregarded). I also noticed that local people tended to eat as people do when they traditionally do not know when the next meal will come - in large quantities. This is fine when eating rice, vegetables and a little meat, but deleterious when ingesting processed carbohydrates.
Diabetes II is a terrible disease. While you might not notice much in the beginning, your organs will let you down one after the other. Therefore it is extremely important to prevent it, and it is possible to prevent it (as opposed to Diabetes I, lack of insulin, which is incurable).
It is very important that people, especially young people, be made aware of the dangers. It is well-known that the body does not have built-in limits to the intake of sugars and starches - they were so rare, such a mechanism would have been entirely redundant and counterproductive. Yet increased intake of starches and sugars taxes insulin production. More and more insulin is required to keep blood sugar levels up to par, until it becomes impossible - blood sugar rises, diabetes II is there. Less well-known is the effect that sugar consumption is addictive - the more you eat, the more you crave it. As a country which has successfully banned tobacco, I feel confident that Bhutan will be able to raise it's people's consciousness equally in this matter.
I also sincerely hope that Bhutan will avoid the great mistake the USA and Europe made - namely, to promote the consumption of sugar-free or fat-free products. Although no official study has confirmed this, it is apparent that such products increase the risk of diabetes. Insulin production is started with the sweet taste in the mouth; when insulin is in the bloodstream and no sugar is found (because it was the sinthetic taste that started it) the person goes into hypoglycemia, which causes a craving for more sugar... until the person gives in, and 'real' sugar (carbohydrates) are consumed. This is a vicious circle, very difficult to break.
So please keep your young people eating healthy food and moving as Bhutanese people have done since time immemorial, and away from lifestyle diseases that have nothing to do in your beautiful country.