The disease itself may not discriminate on the gender basis, but when it comes to healthcare for patients with diabetes, women find themselves at a disadvantage as compared to men. Studies indicate that diabetes, a disease that affects over 371 million people worldwide takes a greater toll on women than men. Though, hormones in women do account for some of the unique challenges they have to face, but there are other societal factors as well that bring in the differences.

This World Diabetes Day is about promoting the significance of affordable care for diabetes and equitable access for all women at risk or living with diabetes to essential medicines, technological information and self-management education they require and achieve an optimal outcome to strengthen their adequacy to prevent type-2 diabetes. Because it's your right to a healthy and disease-free future!

So, how will you know if you are suffering from this deadly disease   Diabetes?

Symptoms

Women with diabetes experience many of the same symptoms as that of men. However, there are some that are specific to women.

Symptoms experienced by both women and men:

Frequent urination

Increased thirst and hunger

Unnecessary weight loss or gain

Blurred vision

Fatigue

Wounds that heal slowly

Skin infections

Nausea

Breath that has a sweet or fruity odor

Irritability

Reduced feeling in hands or feet

Symptoms unique to women:

Vaginal yeast infections

Urinary infections

Vaginal thrush

Polycystic ovary syndrome

Female sexual dysfunction

Diabetes is the ninth leading cause of death in women globally, causing 2.1 million deaths each year. Two out of every five women suffering from diabetes are of reproductive age. Women with diabetes have more difficulty conceiving and may have poor pregnancy outcomes.

Diabetes and Pregnancy

The affect of Diabetes, in a pregnancy, will not be great, if controlled properly. Women with diabetes should talk to their gynaecologists while planning to conceive so that they can control their blood sugar levels even before getting pregnant. Your gynaecologist will help you control and monitor your diabetes and blood sugar levels during pregnancy.

And, if you fail to get your blood sugar levels under control during pregnancy, you may experience severe risks:

Miscarriage

Premature delivery

Difficult delivery or cesarean section (C-section)

Birth defects

Having a large baby

Preeclampsia (high blood pressure usually with protein in the urine)

Low blood glucose in a newborn

Breathing problems in the newborn

Yellowing skin and eyes (jaundice) in a newborn

Worsening diabetic eye problems and kidney problems for the mother

Urinary or bladder infections

What is Gestational Diabetes?

When diabetes occurs in women during pregnancy, it is called gestational diabetes. It is usually diagnosed at the first week of pregnancy. Like in type 1 and type 2 diabetes, blood sugar levels become too high. When a woman is pregnant, more glucose is required to nourish the baby developing inside her womb. During this time, the body needs additional insulin, which is produced by the pancreas. In some women, the body does not produce enough insulin to meet this need, and blood sugar levels rise, resulting in gestational diabetes. 

Fortunately, for most women, gestational diabetes will go away once the baby is delivered. However, women who have had gestational diabetes are at increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes. Further, people suffering from PTSD are at higher risk and should consult their doctors immediately and those who are presently affected with Diabetes should consult for pre-conception consultation.

Risk Factors for Diabetes in Women

You are at risk for type-2 diabetes if you:

are overweight or obese

are older than 45

have a family history of diabetes (parent or sibling)

have had gestational diabetes

have had a baby with a birth weight of more than 9 pounds

have high blood pressure

have high cholesterol

have other health conditions that are linked to problems using insulin, such as PCOS

Diabetes Treatment Options

Medications

There are various medications you can take to control the symptoms of diabetes. These include:

Insulin therapy

Sulfonylureas like chlorpropamide, which increase pancreatic insulin secretion

Metformin (Glucophage), which reduces blood sugar

Lifestyle changes

A change in your diet and lifestyle can also help women control their diabetes

Exercise and maintain a healthy weight

Monitor your blood sugar

Eat a diet focused on fruits, vegetables, and whole grains

Strictly avoid smoking cigarettes

Alternative remedies

Women with diabetes can try other alternative remedies to treat the symptoms, such as 

Eat more broccoli, buckwheat, sage, peas, and fenugreek seeds

Take supplements like chromium or magnesium

Take plant supplements

But, always remember to consult with your doctor before trying any new treatment. Even if they are natural, they can intrude with your on-going treatment or medications. So, this World Diabetes Day, take a pledge towards healthy living... because your health is important to someone else!



type diabetes

Diabetes In Women - Because It's Your Right To A Healthy Future!

When the sugar concentration in the blood increases suddenly and unreasonably, the resulting condition is known as diabetes. Sugar or glucose is generally used in order to provide much needed energy to our bodies. But when the pancreas dysfunctions, it leads to a problem in the insulin production. As a result, glucose or sugar gets directly absorbed into the blood, instead of getting absorbed by insulin. And this leads to the condition of diabetes.

Diabetes Treatment in Ayurveda
For Ayurvedic treatment of diabetes, the first step is usually dietary planning and lifestyle change. Adopting a more active lifestyle, and a healthy, balanced diet low on sugars and starches, is a must. You must begin by avoiding sugars in all forms. This means you will have to get rid of rice, potatoes, white bread, sugar coated cereals, bananas, colocasia and much more. Add a lot of green leafy vegetables to your diet to improve your nutritional status and metabolism. In addition to these, also add some herbs to your diet. Ayurvedic herbs that act as natural medicine for diabetes include turmeric, bitter gourd, gurmar leaves, bael, fenugreek and many more.

Apart from diabetes Ayurvedic treatment, you could also practice yoga, which can help you improve your health. Several yogic asanas help massage your internal organs so that they are healthier and can function much better. Some of the asanas are especially beneficial for the pancreas, which produces insulin. You may have to make some changes to your lifestyle as well. For starters, you will have to maintain a more active lifestyle. You will also have to avoid sleeping in the daytime. Avoid smoking and consuming alcohol and take extra care of your feet.

As an ancient science based on lifestyle related treatment methods that include herbs, massages and life changing tweaks, Ayurveda also provides various methods of managing this ailment. Here's how!

Bitter Gourd: Known as an ingredient that is rich in antioxidants, this can be consumed to take care of diabetes. You will need to first remove the peel of at least four to five bitter gourds before crushing them to create a paste. This paste has to be put through a sieve so that the juice of the gourds can be extracted. You will then have to drink this juice every morning, on an empty stomach.
Cinnamon: From treating coughs and colds to diabetes and other serious ailments, this is a wonder spice that can be found in most Indian kitchens. You can start by boiling a litre of water and letting it simmer on the gas for about twenty minutes. Thereafter, you can add three teaspoons of cinnamon powder to this simmering water. Strain this mixture and drink the entire batch every day to clear out the toxins.
Fenugreek Seeds: For this, you will need to take about four to five tablespoons of fenugreek seeds. These will have to be soaked in a glass of water or about 250ml of water, overnight. In the morning, the softened seeds will need to be crushed before the mixture is strained. The water that escapes should be collected and ingested every day for a period of two months.
Turmeric: Turmeric is a powerful and well-known ingredient that is used for curing and managing many ailments. You will need to mix about half a teaspoon of turmeric powder with one teaspoon of amla powder as well as half a tablespoon of methi seeds or fenugreek seeds powder. This concoction will have to mixed in half a glass of water and taken daily on an empty stomach. This can be used by patients suffering from heart ailments as well.
Diet: Cereals like ragi, corn, kulit, green millet, and barley are known to beneficial for patients suffering from diabetes. Leafy greens are also a must for such patients along with protein-rich foods like soya beans.

Diabetes - The Ayurvedic Remedies! 

There was an era where we had deadly infections like plague and polio causing death of thousands of people. We still have occasional outbreak of swine flu, but by and large, infections are quite controlled. The new killer diseases are caused because of the lifestyle we have adapted and the damage we have done to the environment. High intake of processed foods, artificial chemicals in our foods, sedentary lifestyle with very minimal to no physical activity, couching over the computers; the list is quite long. All these have led to diseases like diabetes and cancer that were not so common about say few decades ago.

Detailed observation has revealed that both these new epidemiologic diseases have a close correlation. There are factors, which induce diabetes and diabetes in turn and in some cases, diabetes inducing agents, can cause cancer also. It has also been observed that mortality is severely increased if diabetic patients are diagnosed with cancer. There are two types of diabetes. While type 1 is mostly hereditary, type 2 is lifestyle induced and the age at which this is being diagnosed is taking a severe plunge. Adolescents and teenagers are being diagnosed for diabetes. Cancer, on the other hand, is of various types (leukaemia, melanoma, etc.) and can affect various organs (lung, breast, prostate, stomach, liver, etc.).

The medical community is yet to decipher the disease pattern of both these conditions. While there is no definite correlation between diabetes and all types of cancer, some types of cancer are definitely correlated with a definite reason identified, pancreatic and liver cancer for instance. The high amounts of insulin that diabetic patients are exposed to causes changes in liver and pancreas including fatty liver and cirrhosis, here the incidence of cancer is higher. The linkage is not very clear in lung and intestinal cancers and also there is no link between prostate cancer and diabetes.

Diabetes is considered as a state of chronic inflammation and leads to conditions like hyperinsulinemia (higher levels of insulin in the blood) hyperglycemia (higher levels of sugar in the blood). These are believed to aggravate the neoplastic process of cancer formation, thereby inducing cancer at a greater pace and also increasing the mortality rates.

The following are risk factors that are applicable to both age, physical activity, diet, obesity, drinking and smoking. It is also possible that onset of one can be followed by the other. As noted earlier, more detailed research is awaited to establish a definite linkage, but the correlation cannot be ignored at all.

Both these new epidemics are here to stay and since they have a common set of factors, we need to work on ways to contain them.

Diabetes and Cancer: The New Epidemic?

Diabetes is often called the silent killer. This is because you would not even know when it sneaks up on you. It may not have any symptoms initially but once you have it, you would need lifelong administration of drugs. Diabetes or diabetes mellitus, is a metabolic disease in which sugar does not get metabolized properly in the body. This means that the blood sugar levels continue to be high, threatening the normal functioning of the body.

Types of Diabetes

There are three types of diabetes. These are:

Type 1 Diabetes: this is a condition in which in which the body does not produce insulin at all. Patients suffering from this condition may need to take insulin supplements for the rest of their life, in order to properly metabolize sugar in the body. This is a very rare, genetic condition.

Type 2 Diabetes: this is a condition in which the insulin product is impaired and there is not enough insulin in the body for metabolizing sugars properly. This leads to high blood sugar and eventually, the symptoms of diabetes.

Gestational Diabetes: This is an affliction of pregnant women. Some women s bodies may not be able to produce enough insulin at the time of pregnancy and therefore they have excess sugar in their blood stream. Gestational diabetes may be harmful for both the mother and the baby.

Diabetes Treatment in Ayurveda

For Ayurvedic treatment of diabetes, the first step is usually dietary planning and lifestyle change. Adopting a more active lifestyle, and a healthy, balanced diet low on sugars and starches, is a must. You must begin by avoiding sugars in all forms. This means you will have to get rid of rice, potatoes, white bread, sugar coated cereals, bananas, colocasia and much more. Add a lot of green leafy vegetables to your diet to improve your nutritional status and metabolism. In addition to these, also add some herbs to your diet. Ayurvedic herbs that act as natural medicine for diabetes include turmeric, bitter gourd, gurmar leaves, bael, fenugreek and many more.

Apart from diabetes Ayurvedic treatment, you could also practice yoga, which can help you improve your health. Several yogic asanas help massage your internal organs so that they are healthier and can function much better. Some of the asanas are especially beneficial for the pancreas, which produce insulin. You may have to make some changes to your lifestyle as well. For starters, you will have to maintain a more active lifestyle. You will also have to avoid sleeping in the daytime. Avoid smoking and consuming alcohol and take extra care of your feet.

Here are a few home remedies that may help cure diabetes naturally:

Juice of Bitter Gourd:

You may consume 30ml of fresh juice of Karela/ bitter melon every day early in the morning. You can also mix it with other things to make simple recipes and consume it.

How to prepare:

Separate the seeds and mix the fruit in the mixer. Add a little bit of water and mix it in the blender. Use a sieve to obtain the juice.

Small and thin pieces of the bitter gourd are cut. Fry them with some mustard oil and the required quantity of salt. Add green chillies and onions to the pan and heat the mixture for 10-15 minutes.

Aloe Vera and Ground bay leaf:

The mixture of aloe vera gel (1 tbsp), ground bay leaf (1/2 tsp), and turmeric (1/2 tsp) is recommended to be taken twice a day before lunch and dinner for effective hyperglycaemic control.

Methi Seeds:

Methi seeds, also known as Fenugreek seeds, when taken by itself or in combination with other Ayurvedic herbs, can act as an effective remedy to lower the symptoms of diabetes.

How to prepare:

Grind a few Methi seeds and turmeric together and take it with a glass of milk at least twice a day.

Soak fenugreek seeds in warm water overnight followed by chewing it in the morning.

Soak 4tbsp of fenugreek seeds in about 300ml of water overnight and chew it the following morning.

Prepare chapattis with fenugreek seed powder

Jamun Seeds:

The powdered seeds of Eugenia jambolana (about 1 tsp) should be taken twice a day with lukewarm water. Jamun has the beneficial property of not allowing the starch in food to get converted into sugar.

Amla:

Amla juice (Embelica officinalis) (20 ml) two times a day is beneficial for a diabetic patient. You may also use powdered  Amla  powder and consume it twice a day.

Banyan Tree Bark:

A decoction of the bark of banyan tree is taken (50 ml) twice a day.

Preparation method: 20 gm of the banyan tree bark is boiled in 4 glasses of water. Evaporate the water until only about one glass of the decoction is remaining and drink it when it is warm.

Cinnamon Powder:

Cinnamon powder is probably considered as one of the most important home remedies.

How to prepare: Add 3-4 Tbsp of cinnamon powder and add to one litre of water and boil the same for about 20 minutes. Strain this mixture and cool the same. It is recommended to consume it every day.

Diabetes Cure In Ayurveda 

Diabetes refers to the condition when there is an excess of glucose in your body. Though glucose is beneficial for the proper functioning of the body, an excess can lead to serious consequences. Over the years, diabetes has over the years emerged as one of the fatal diseases, one that once developed has no known cure. This condition is preceded by various perceptible symptoms, some of them are-

1. Insatiable thirst

The onset of diabetes is almost always accompanied by a nagging thirst, one that refuses to be quenched despite drinking plenty of water.

2. Frequent tendencies of urination

A frequent tendency of urination is one of the primary precursors of diabetes.

3. Acute hunger

Having bouts of acute hunger is one of the most predominant premonitions of diabetes.

4. Exhaustion and fatigue

In case you are suffering from diabetes, you will inevitably feel tired and exhausted all the time.

5. Blurring of vision

Diabetes is one of those rare conditions that threaten to affect and damage the eyesight. The blurring of vision comes hand in hand with the onset of diabetes.

6. Sores which take a long time to heal

One of the most fatal symptoms of diabetes is when the sore that you have suffered from takes a longer time than necessary to heal.

Some of the complications which diabetes invite are-

1. Cardiovascular problems

Diabetes considerably increases the risk of a host of cardiovascular problems and ailments like heart attacks, chest pain, and stroke.

2. Damage to the kidneys

The pair of kidneys that human beings are endowed with has the responsibility to remove the toxins from the body. An excess of diabetes in the body unsettles the purging ability of the kidneys.

3. Damage to the eyes

The onset of diabetes, among other things, puts your eyes at great risks. The condition tends to damage the blood vessels of the retina and can even cause blindness in some.

4. Skin disorder

Diabetes puts your skin at great risks. You may suffer from various bacterial and fungal infections among other ailments, due to an excess of glucose in your body.

Symptoms and Complications of Diabetes

Many people know that smoking causes several problems including cancer, heart disease, and respiratory disease. However, there are other diseases occur because of smoking and chewing tobacco. Buerger's Disease is one such disease in which the blood vessels in legs and arms get blocked. This blockage will interfere in blood flow and results in forming blood clots. These clots will affect both legs and
hands.
Buerger's Disease is also known as Thromboangitis Obliterans. It is a type of vasculitis which causes inflammation in the blood vessels including thickening, narrowing, weakening, or scarring.
Buerger's Disease cannot be cured easily. However, by quitting the use of tobacco and smoking, one can limit the symptoms from getting worse. If a person is not able to quit smoking, he/she might end up
suffering from severe tissue damage. One can also even lose toes, fingers, or other parts of the limbs. This is why quitting all type of tobacco or smoking is the only way to treat Buerger's Disease.

What Causes Buerger's Disease?
As discussed earlier, smoking cigarettes or cigars and chewing any form of tobacco is one of the main causes of Buerger's Disease. Still, the exact cause of this disease is unknown, but in most cases of Buerger's Disease, the sufferer has consumed tobacco products. It is an assumption that chemicals present in tobacco, cigarettes, and cigars may affect the lining of blood vessels, causing them to swell. According to experts, the genes in the body may also cause this disease. It is suspected that this disease is caused by an autoimmune response in which the immune system of the body attacks healthy tissues mistakenly. According to this theory, some people are prone to this disease.

Symptoms of Buerger's Disease-
Some of the most common symptoms of Buerger's Disease are:
  Pain in the hands and feet while exercising
  Stiffness due to reduced blood flow
  Pain at Rest
  Skin ulcerations
  Gangrene of the fingers and toes in severe cases
  Numbness, coldness, or tingling of the feet and hand
  Pale, reddish, or blue-tinted hands or feet.

Diagnosis of Buerger s Disease-
There is a set of tests that can diagnose Buerger s disease. Doctors first ask a person about his/her lifestyle, use of tobacco, and symptoms. After seeing a few symptoms, doctors may perform a test to check the blood flow. He may also look for other diseases that cause similar symptoms. Some of the common test to diagnose Buerger s Disease are:


  Allen Test: The Allen test is a blood flow test. In this type of test, patients squeeze their hand into a firm fist, which pushes out blood from hand. The doctor presses the arteries to slow down the
blood flow of the hand. At this stage, the normal color of the skin gets pale. After that, patients open his/her hand and doctors release the pressure from both sides of the wrist one by one. If it takes a longer time to go back to the normal skin color, it may be an indication of Buerger s disease

  Angiogram: It is a type of X-ray that will help to check the blockage of the blood vessels in the legs and arms. In this test, doctor place catheter (thin tube) into an artery to pump the dye. After
that, he takes X-ray images. Doctors may also perform tomography (CT) or MRI scan for clear results.

  Blood Tests: The blood tests will help the doctor to check if there is any other disease that causes the same symptoms as most of the vascular diseases mimics the symptoms of Buerger s
Disease. The doctor may also perform tests to check for diseases like lupus, diabetes, and those that cause blood clots.

Treatment of Buerger' Disease-
Quitting smoking and use of tobacco will help a person to lower the symptoms of this disease. Doctors may also prescribe for pain killers or antibiotics to get rid of the pain in affected areas. If a person finds it difficult to quit smoking, doctors help him/her with the right program and rehabilitation techniques.

Take Away-
Buerger's Disease is one of the rare illness caused by intake of tobacco products, this is why quitting smoking is most important to treat this disease. It is also advisable to consult a doctor as soon as a person identify any of the above symptoms.

All You Need To Know About Peripheral Vascular Injuries!

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