By Loretta Broome, MHA, CPhT
Diabetes Should Change your mental diet
As a Pharmacy Technician since 1999, I have many encounters with patients that are fighting the “Diabetes Battle”. Some patients were Type 1 Diabetics (autoimmune disorder) and some patients were Type 2 Diabetics (diet induced). Through my experience and continuing education through my Pharmacy Technician career, my perspective about how diabetics endure diabetes has evolved into a blended awareness.
There are two components to the “Blended Awareness for Diabetics”. The first component comes from a health care perspective. As a health care professional, I want to encourage diabetic patients to adhere to a healthy diabetic diet. With this encouragement of a healthy diabetic diet comes the realistic thought of “how can an individual omit sugar/carbs”? The diabetic individual knows the repercussion from the consumption of the sugar/carbs and that this consumption will induce their blood sugars out of normal range yet the diabetic individual still consumes the sugar/carbohydrates.
Realistically, as a health care professional without diabetes, I would have challenges to omit sugar/carbs from my diet. Anyone can reduce their sugar/carbs in their diet but to manage a diabetic regimen is a different challenge. So, how does the health care professional effectively help a diabetic patient with omitting sugar/carbs from their diet?
The second component of my “Blended Awareness for Diabetics” in the non-profession mentally—the individual side of me. As an individual that has been seen the effects diabetes has on the human body, I comprehend the complexity of diabetes but really, how can a non-diabetic individual fully comprehend the complexity of having diabetes? I don’t know the 24/7 concern of “sugar intake” and needed constant awareness of beverage and food intake.
As a Pharmacy Technician Instructor, I have taught my “Blended Awareness for Diabetics” perspective to my students. Diabetes management involves humanity and medical intervention. Encourage a patient to take baby steps to reach the optimal diabetes management plan. Health Care Professionals should be empathetic toward the inflexible life style change that a diabetic patient endures 24/7. As a health care professional, we are responsible for providing factual responses to diabetic patient but the responses can be factual and empathetic.
As a health care professional and as an individual, humanity and factual responses is the proper dose of medicine to effectively encourage proper diet intake for a diabetic patient. The diabetic patient will have a life-long struggle with the inflexibility of diabetes but give the diabetic patient credit for fighting the life-long battle. When you judge a diabetic patient, you should question yourself, “What would you do if you were a diabetic patient”?
