DIABETES: FACT OR FICTION?

Diabetes is a long-term disease that affects the body’s ability to process sugar. With careful management, people with diabetes can live long happy lives. There are many myths that surround diabetes. This blog post will attempt to debunk many of the common theories that surround diabetes.

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  1. All diabetes is the same-FICTION

There are four clinical categories of diabetes. These include type one diabetes, type two diabetes, gestational diabetes, and diabetes caused by other specific conditions such as genetic defects, or chemical induced diabetes (American Diabetes Association, 2014).

  1. Insulin can be dangerous-FACT

Any medication can potentially cause harm, however there are a group of drugs known as High Alert Medications (HAM) that carry a high risk of potential patient harm. HAM are broken up into four different categories: anticoagulants, sedatives, opioids, and insulins. Even when given correctly, these drugs can still cause significant harm. These drugs have a narrow therapeutic index and cause significant harm if they are given by the wrong route or a system failure happens. Several reports indicate that most insulin errors occur from human error. This includes concentration errors, distractions, and forgetfulness.

An example of a concentration error is between U-500 insulin and U-100 insulin. U-500 insulin is a form of insulin that is 5 times more potent than U-100 insulin. There are special syringes for U-500 insulin, however patients on U-500 are often taught to draw up their insulin in a tuberculin syringe. For example, a patient that that receives 150 units of U-500 would be taught to draw up 0.3ml utilizing a tuberculin syringe. However, without being familiar with this technique, 30 units of insulin could mistakenly be drawn up if they just notice the 0.3ml. They could even attempt to give 150 units of U-500 utilizing U-100 syringes (Anderson & Townsend, 2010).

  1. Consuming too much sugar leads to diabetes-FICTION

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Patients with type one diabetes develop the disease due to destruction of cells of the pancreas, nothing to do with sugar consumption. Type two diabetes is due to the body being unable to respond to insulin. Type two diabetes can develop due to weight gain, which many link to over-consumption of sugar, however there is no direct link to sugar consumption and development of type 2 diabetes (Singh, 2014).

  1. Diabetics can take insulin pills to manage their blood sugar so they do not need to inject insulin-FICTION

While all patients with type one diabetes need to take insulin, those with type two diabetes may not necessarily require insulin. However, there are no oral forms of insulin. If insulin was given orally, it would be destroyed by the digestive enzymes in the body. These pills can help type two diabetics make more insulin or use the insulin they have more efficiently. These pills do not work for type one diabetics because their bodies no longer make insulin (Singh, 2014).

References

American Diabetes Association. (2014). Standards of medical care in diabetes. Diabetes care, 37(1), 14-80.

Anderson, B. P., & Townsend, T. (2010). Medication errors. American Nurse Today, 10(5), 23-27.

Singh, M. (2014). Myths about Diabetes among Adolescents and Their Parents. J Child Adolesc Behav, 2(4), 1-3.