Friday, June 20, 2008

Picking The Diabetes Forum For You

One of the most painful aspects of diabetes is that you seem to be the only one in the world with diabetes. You might be the only one in your family, job or community with diabetes. And this can make you depressed, which can aggravate your illness.

But you are not alone. If you have online access, you can hook up instantly to a diabetes forum, where those with diabetes all around the world can share problems and solutions. But, if you enter “diabetes forum” in a search engine, you are likely to come up with hundreds, if not thousands of separate diabetes forums. Does that mean you have to join them all? No, of course not. By using your common sense and a little patience, you can soon pick the diabetes forum for you.

Narrowing Down The Field

First off, what type of diabetes do you have? Type I or Type II? The advice and treatments will differ dramatically according to what type of diabetes is being discussed. If you don’t know, you MUST go to a doctor for a proper diagnosis. After knowing what type of diabetes you have, you can then move on to ask other questions of you’re your kind of diabetes situation:

What age are you? There are diabetes forums which are just for children or just for adults.
How are you getting treated? There are diabetes forums that will stick with conventional medicine, and some that will combine alternative and holistic medicine.
How active is the forum? If the last post was over a month ago, then the forum members are unlikely to answer any questions you may have soon.
Look at the posts topics already on the diabetes forum. Does it sound like the forum members are going through the same problems you are? If they are, you’ve found your forum.

Joining An Online Forum

It’s free to join an online diabetes forum – well, unless you ignore the cost of getting a computer and internet access! You should NEVER be asked for personal information like your credit card number, driver’s license number or social security number. The only things you usually need to give are:

Your name (which usually doesn’t appear in your posts)
Your email address
A password that you make up yourself
Anything else is voluntary

Online forums can be a real joy. Not only do you discover you are not alone, but you can make some nice friendships.

The Importance of a Diabetes Discussion

Although diabetes is one of the most common diseases in the world, it is actually surprising just how little is known about it. Even some of the people who have actually been diagnosed with the disease are not fully aware of how it works, and this is a very serious thing because if diabetes is left untreated or is improperly managed, there can be incredibly serious consequences as a result.

Diabetes Discussion

A diabetes discussion is very necessary here then in order to make people more informed in general, and a proper diabetes discussion will include all of the necessary issues. The most important thing to know in any diabetes discussion is that it is a chronic condition and there is no cure.

There are basically three different types of diabetes, which are: type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is most often found in young children and teenagers although it is able to affect anyone of any age. With this type of diabetes what is happening is that your body is not producing enough insulin, and it is insulin which is required in order to convert your blood sugar into energy. This is why a lot of people with diabetes, especially before they realize they have it, tend to feel very sluggish and weary.

With type 2 diabetes however, which is the most common form of diabetes, the body is either producing too little insulin or is not producing it properly. Either way what this results in is a build up of glucose in the bloodstream which, if left untreated, can cause serious long-term health problems, and in the worst cases even result in death.

Gestational diabetes is the third and final type of diabetes to be mentioned in this diabetes discussion, and this is the type of diabetes that is suffered only by pregnant women. It is actually the pregnancy itself which causes the woman’s blood sugar to be higher than normal, because of the hormones that are produced during this time. This diabetes will usually become apparent during the 24th to 28th week, and in most cases will disappear on its own after the baby is born.

Especially if you have diabetes yourself, it is incredibly important to make yourself informed and aware on the issue, so that you can be as knowledgeable as possible on the disease and recognize how it works and how you can treat it.