What Is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a serious chronic health condition that affects your body’s ability to produce insulin, which turns food into energy. If your body doesn’t produce enough insulin, your bloodstream will have too much blood sugar in it, which can lead to other health problems like heart disease, blindness, and kidney disease. There are two main types of diabetes:

Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 Diabetes is caused by an autoimmune reaction that prevents your body from making appropriate amounts of insulin. Only around 5-10% of the people diagnosed with diabetes have type 1, and symptoms generally come on quickly and can include nausea, vomiting, and stomach pains. Risk factors for Type 1 diabetes include family history and younger age, as it typically begins during childhood or young adulthood.

Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes happens when your body doesn’t use insulin the way it’s supposed to and can’t keep blood sugar at normal levels. Type 2 is the most commonly diagnosed diabetes and usually develops gradually without any noticeable symptoms. If you do notice symptoms, they may include frequent urination, increased hunger and thirst, unintentional weight loss, blurred vision, numb hands or feet, fatigue, and slowly healing wounds. You may be at a higher risk for developing Type 2 diabetes if you have prediabetes, are overweight, are 45 years or older, exercise less than three times a week, and are of African American, Latino, American Indian, or Alaska Native descent.

How We Manage Diabetes

Although there is no one treatment for diabetes, there are ways to help manage your condition and control your A1C levels. The providers of Nirvana Healthcare Management Services offer diabetes management services to help our patients reach their best possible health. Your physician will work with you to decide on treatment options that can help you to do so, and some of these include:

Insulin Therapy

Insulin therapy is essential for the survival of people with Type 1 diabetes, and many Type 2 diabetes patients also require insulin therapy to control their blood sugar. Insulin is injected into the fat beneath your skin using a syringe, insulin pen, or insulin pump. You might have to check and record your blood sugar multiple times a day if you take insulin to ensure it’s in the target range.

Monitoring Blood Sugar

Monitoring blood sugar is another method to help manage diabetes and make sure that your blood sugar level is within your target range. This is usually done with a glucose meter or a continuous glucose monitor. Your physician may also recommend regular A1C testing as part of your treatment plan.

Medication

Occasionally, your physician may prescribe medications to help manage diabetes. These include SGLT2 inhibitors that prevent the kidneys from reabsorbing sugar into the blood, medications that stimulate your pancreas to produce and release more insulin, medications that inhibit the production of glucose from your liver, and more.

Lifestyle Changes

Making lifestyle changes is typically recommended for people with Type 2 diabetes. Your doctor may make suggestions for living healthier, which include getting regular exercise, eating a balanced diet, maintaining a healthy body weight, quitting smoking, and more.

Diabetes is a serious disease, but the good news is with careful management, you can reduce your risk of dangerous complications and your primary care physician at Nirvana Healthcare Management Services will assist you.

Escaping Diabetes: “Knowledge Is Power”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that more than 100 million U.S. adults are now living with diabetes or prediabetes. The report finds that 9.4 percent of the U.S. population have diabetes. Another 25 percent, are prediabetic, a condition that if not treated often leads to Type-2 diabetes within five years. It is often just a matter of dietary modifications that do not have to interfere with your love of food or enjoyment of life. It’s a matter of knowing what to eat in moderation and what can be substituted for some of your favorite sugar-laden or high-carbohydrate foods.

Diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2015. It is a serious disease that may often be managed through physical activity, diet, and the appropriate use of insulin and other medications to control blood sugar levels. People with diabetes are at increased risk of serious health complications, including premature death, vision loss, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, and amputation of toes, feet, or legs.

“We always like to say knowledge is power and you have to kind of demystify and decompress peoples’ notions and anxieties so they don’t make decisions based on fiction or what someone else said,” Dr. Alexander Salerno, Administrative Head of Salerno Medical Associates (SMA), said of the importance of educating patients on the two greatest assaults on public health— diabetes and obesity.

One way to do it is through small classroom appointments, which is HIPAA-compliant. We take five to seven patients into a classroom setting for a 50-minute session on their shared disease state. Diabetes is one of the most common subjects.  This shared approach is also used for other diseases and disorders.

Our certified health educator is a big part of our preventative approach, educating on low-calorie, low-sugar and Mediterranean diets, low-sodium diets and custom tailored meal plans for healthy choices with an accent on flavorful and tasty foods. There are sacrifices that have to be made to switch to a healthy diet foe those who have been eating—often overeating— processed high-sugar and high-sodium foods for years, but that doesn’t mean you have to abandon enjoyable meals.

We have the physicians, technology and programs to keep you a step ahead of the potential ravages of diabetes:

• One of the first places that the signs of diabetes appear is in the eye. We have RetinaVue, a diagnostic test and screen for diabetic eye. We transmit a picture of the back of the eyeball to a HIPAA-secure line to a board-certified ophthalmologist who can tell if there is a diabetic eye issue. It takes about 10 minutes. HIPAA-secure means nobody gets access to your medical information or health history unless you anoint them to do so.
• We do fittings for inserts and diabetic shoes that are DME (Durable Medical Equipment) certified. The feet are often the source of pain and discomfort for diabetics, and regular footwear often leaves pressure wounds. Patients may actually choose from a wide selection of shoies for men and women in our office. They may be measured for custom fittings, which we forward to the manufacturer. There are also custom-made inserts available.
• We’ll outfit you with seven-day continuous home sugar monitors that stay on the patient 24 hours a day. The device tracks whatever you do, and literally monitors your sugar every several minutes. It promotes a better understanding of the patient’s diabetic needs and how to treat and diagnose.
• We will screen and diagnose prediabetes, a pre-diagnosis of diabetes, if you will, and basically an early warning sign that if you don’t do something soon, you’re going to cross the line into Type-2 diabetes. There is almost always a direct relationship to weight, waistline and lifestyle changes to get blood glucose back to normal levels.

Call us at (973) 672-8573 or make an appointment online!

Make an Appointment with Us Today

Take control of your health with diabetes management services in the East Orange and Newark, NJ areas from Nirvana Healthcare Management Services. We offer family-owned primary care medical practices that diagnose and treat both acute and chronic diseases, like diabetes. Contact us to make your next appointment today.