14th of November is celebrated worldwide as Word Diabetes Day and this year we are focusing on on Women and Diabetes. Why, do you wonder? 1 in 7 births is affected by Gestational Diabetes. There are ~200 million women around the world living with Diabetes and with India being the Diabetes Capital of the World, the number of women in India living undiagnosed is even higher. In a population of 1.2 billion, women contribute to around 30 million Diabetics! It’s a staggering number but isn’t surprising considering the lifestyle Indian women adopt.
Since 2 of 5 women are in reproductive age, the risk of births being affected by gestational diabetes is also high. Half of the women with gestational diabetes go ahead and develop Type-2 diabetes and the worrisome part is these women are 10 times more prone to coronary heart diseases than women without it. With the stress factors involved in low and middle income countries like ours, the odds are even higher.
How can you help solve this?
Regardless of whether you are a man/woman living with the condition or a man/ who’d like to put an end to the mismanaged crisis, here’s what you can do:
- Spread awareness that Diabetes is a lifestyle disease and can be managed with changes in lifestyle and medications
- Spread awareness on prevention, screening, self management, information about the condition
- Get GDM and diabetes screening as a part of maternal services to facilitate early detection of the disease
- Change in lifestyle – every woman must be taught and empowered to take care of her health, food and fitness. Education around the same needs to be imparted.
- If you have a history of diabetes, get yourself checked early and follow an active lifestyle routine – obesity is a major causative factor.
- There is a direct relation to uncontrolled diabetes and coronary heart diseases – early detection and management keeps a check on that.
- Once diagnosed, check yourselves regularly – there are devices available in the market with which can check your ECG, Blood sugar and activity levels together at home and check with your doctor – You can check out one such product here – LifePhone Plus BG
Changing the lifestyle of women would change the lifestyle and food habits of the entire family and it would go a long way in making the society a better place to live.
Suggested read: To make prevention easier, cheaper
#JoinhandswithBPL #WorldDiabetesDay #Empowerwomen #Wakeuptowellness
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