KARACHI: There is a need to adopt simple lifestyle to manage diabetes.
This was stressed by speakers, most of them young, at 25th International Children’s Health Conference. The moot was organized by Hamdard Foundation Pakistan at a local hotel, an official of the organization said on Friday.
The speakers also urged the people to adopt diabetes preventive measures as managing diabetes is not so difficult to follow but it can be managed by choosing a simple life style, daily exercise, walking, balanced diet and avoiding sugar intake and smoking. Dr Fatema Jawad said that there were approximately 7.1 million diabetic patients in Pakistan and the numbers would increase by 11.1% by 2020.
She said that people must be encouraged to take preventive measures against this disease and government should provide facility of awareness centers to public as hitherto no figure of child patients of diabetes are available. Dr Fatema discussed in detail the types and reasons of diabetes including gestational and pregnancy diabetes and stressed that unless people change their life style, the situation would not be changed.
“People have become lazy, they eat more and got obesity, resulting in diabetes and abdominal fat resists insulin.” she said. She said, “If diabetes is diagnosed don’t delay to consult physician, avoid fast food, burgers and chips and other junk foods, but don’t skip food and don’t eat more but eat healthy diet, walk and exercise daily and that is the pillar and principle to control diabetes.”
Highlighting the threats and consequences of diabetes, she said that this disease could destroy gums and teeth, create swelling on face and foot, sever pain in body and lead to glaucoma, blindness and sudden death, she warned.
Earlier, Sadia Rashid, President, Hamdard Foundation Pakistan, while delivering conference address said that quarter of a century had elapsed since Hamdard held its first international children’s health conference and that ground-breaking event- the very first conference for and by children was the result of one of the innovative ideas of Shaheed Hakim Mohammed Said in Pakistan.
Basically, diabetes is a disease caused when the pancreas in the body does not produce, or produces insufficient amounts of the hormone insulin. If it cannot get into the cells to be burnt to produce energy, sugar builds up to harmful levels in the blood. Over time, high blood sugar can compromise every major organ system in the body, causing heart attacks, strokes, nerve damage, kidney failure, blindness and infection which may lead to amputations as a medical report says that last year 40,000 people lose their legs due to diabetes in the country, she said and adding that of the two types of diabetes, type 1 is rare and type 2, which accounts for 90% of the cases, is the result of insufficient insulin production or the body’s inability to use it properly.
She said, the modern technology and the lifestyle were the main factors in the growth rate of the disease. The car has reduced people’s need to walk and television has replaced the necessity of more physical forms of entertainment as children are more occupied with watching cartoon or playing video games, resulting diabetes among juveniles, she added.
`Research continues, not just for medicine, but also monitoring devices, but the best weapons are still simple: Sensible food in sensible quantities; and sufficient exercise to tone the muscles and burn the calories consumed, she said. Dr. Sara Salman in her address said that every year the World Health Organization (WHO) selected a priority area of global public concern as the theme of World Health Day, on 7th April, the birthday of organization.
`The theme of WHD 2016 is `Let us beat the diabetes’ which is characterized by elevated blood glucose levels. Today 422 million adults have been affected in the world four times more than in 1980 and this disease was rising fastest in the world’s low and middle income countries and Pakistan was one of them.
