Amputation, blindness, heart attack, kidney failure.
People without diabetes, stop scaring the crap out of those who have it!
And diabetics, do not dwell on your impending faith.
Sure, being haunted by diabetes does put a person at a higher risk for diseases and even death. However, it doesn’t mean that you should brood in a little corner for the rest of your life.
Last month, a team of scientists from Denmark made a gripping statement. According to their study, how you manage your diabetes could have a significant impact on your lifespan and your quality of life.
The researchers followed a group of patients with type 2 diabetes and microalbuminuria for roughly 21 years. The patients were randomly assigned to follow either a conventional intervention or an intensive therapy with multiple targets points. The intensive treatment took into account a wide range of modifiable risk factors of diabetes (e.g. blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides levels, blood sugar) and included both behavioral (e.g. diet, exercise, smoking) and pharmacological approaches.
The results gathered from people who followed the intensive program beat the conventional-therapy group out by a long shot. For instance, with the intensive therapy, participants experienced lower blood pressure, blood sugar, and total cholesterol.
These outcomes are not surprising considering the huge amount of studies that have consistently demonstrated the benefits of lifestyle and diet changes, as well as pharmacological agents.
But the stunning finding from the study is the longer lifespan people receiving the intensive therapy.
“At 21.2 years of follow-up of 7.8 years of intensified, multifactorial, target-driven treatment of type 2 diabetes with microalbuminuria, we demonstrate a median of 7.9 years of gain of life,” reported the authors of the study.
Furthermore, the intensive group experienced its first cardiovascular event 8.1 years after the conventional-therapy group, which coincides with the extended lifespan.
According to Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the Clinical Diabetes Center at Montefiore Medical Center in NYC, “Physicians are not being aggressive enough, and aren’t treating to targets at the beginning. If you look at all the factors they (the Danish researchers) treated, about 80 percent of the U.S. population isn’t treated correctly, according to national surveys.”
