Cost of diabetes care in the UK
A new 12-page report published by
Diabetes UK calls diabetes (all types) one of the biggest health challenges for the UK.
This report,
Diabetes: beware the silent assassin (PDF) shows that diabetes costs the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK £1 million ($1.72 million) per
hour, and causes more deaths that prostate and breast cancer combined.
If this is true for the UK (population 60 million, and 2.3 million with diabetes), you can image the impact in the US, which has five times as many people and about
ten times more people with diabetes.
Diabetes is a serious disease with no simple solutions, there may not be all that much we can do in the short term to reduce the impact. Although page seven of the report does have some suggestions for reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
In my mind one of the
key factors for success in diabetes management is having a good support organization. These days I can't recommend a better place for support than
TuDiabetes.com. It's an amazing resource for sharing information and getting help with all types of diabetes-related issues and I wish many more folks with diabetes were benefiting from the site.
Drop by and try it out.
Labels: community, costs, diabetes, risk
My alleged heart attack
To stop you from worrying I have not had a heart attack. Or any inkling of one.
Recently when I saw my excellent endo we had a discussion about whether I should continue to take a statin to reduce my cholesterol.
I've been taking
Lipitor for about a year. I changed my use of the medicine (this
may not work for you) from a 10mg pill every day to
half of a 10mg pill every other day. I see a substantial reduction in my cholesterol level with this dose and I don't seem to have any of the possible side effects, thank God.
But a while ago, I read
news about investigations into the benefits of taking statins. This was why I had the conversation. I was especially taken by the quote from the NY Times article.
"If a patient has had a heart attack," Dr. Afilalo said, "they generally should be on a statin."
For people who haven't had a heart attack the investigation showed there isn't as much evidence that taking statins provides a substantial benefit to enough folks to justify everyone taking it.
I was shocked by her response. "But you've already had a heart attack." For a moment I thought I was in an alternate dimension. I reminded her that I'd not actually had one. She told me that type 1 diabetes increases my risk of heart problems. Just as much as if I'd actually had one. Yikes.
Now I do really like and respect my endo. I've moved medical offices to follow her from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. But I still like to verify what I'm told, it's my natural cynical nature.
Then earlier this month I saw
this news report. She was
right! A recent study found that folks with diabetes (both type 1 and type 2) have
double the risk for a heart attack.
So for now I'll be staying on my statin and living with yet another drug to reduce the risk of "bad things" happening in my future.
Attribution: This beautiful picture was taken by
Conny. She retains all rights to the image and I'm grateful to her for letting me use it in this post.
Labels: diabetes, health, heart, risk, statins
