1.  You cannot take sugar or sweet things or you will get diabetes.
Taking sugar or high calorie foods in reasonable amounts does not cause diabites.  However if one is predisposed to diabetes or has a strong family tendency toward diabites, taking high calorie foods may overload the insulin response mechanism and may precipitate the problem.  Similarly if one becomes obese due to overeating, there is insulin resistance, meaning that the normal ability of insulin induce the uptake of glucose into fat and muscle cells is affected.

2.  You must not start on medications or you will be stuck on diabetic medications forever.
A common belief.  The tendency for a lot of people is to view medications for diabetes with the same distaste as habit-forming drugs, to be taken only when absolutely necessary and in the barest minimum dosage, and stopping them the moment the condition seems well controlled.  They do not want to face the fact that their body’s insulin response mechanism has gone haywire and that this is going to be a long term problem.
3.  If I get a cut I heal pretty fast.  Therefore I am not diabetic.
Although in theory healing is slowed down in diabetes, this does not seem to translate into slow wound healing all the time.  Testing for diabetes is a simple matter involving taking a small drop of blood (the patient has to fast for 12 hours) and checking it for diabetes blood sugar levels.

4.  I don’t see ants crawling around where I pee.  Therefore I am not diabetic.
Where there be sugar, there be ants. Sugar appears in the urine usually only when the blood levels exceed the renal threshold of about 10mmol/L (about 180mg/100ml).  Diabetics do not necessarily have their blood sugar above this level all the time.

5.  Don’t hang around diabetics.  You will get it from them.
Diabetes is not infectious.

6.  You’re diabetic.  No more sweets, cakes, chocolates for you.
Take normal foods.  Just take smaller amounts, and do not overload on the calories.

7.  You’re diabetic.  You need special food like diabetic jams, low calorie foodstuff.  Brown bread for you.  No more white bread.
I see a lot of people who gorge on brown bread in the belief that since the calorie value per gram of food is lower, it is safe to take as much as they like.  In the end the total calorie load goes way beyond expectations.

8.  If you’re diabetic you have a higher chance of getting high blood pressure.
No real direct relationship.  However it is estimated that up to 66% of people with diabetes may also have high blood pressure, and because having both illnesses cause one to have an even more increased risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes, one tends to need to be more aggressive in controlling both illnesses, if both are present.

9.  I can’t get children if I am diabetic.
Fertility is not affected.  However the chances of your children getting diabetes later in life tends to be higher than normal, and go progressively higher the more of your close relatives have the problem.

10.  If I delay my treatment now I can always go on it later if need be.  That way I don’t need to be on medications that long.
The longer you wait before treatment, the higher the chances of complications occurring.  It is estimated that the varying degress of kidney impairment or failure will have occurred within 2 years of diagnosis, if there is no treatment.

11.  My fasting blood sugar was 8mmol/l when I was diagnosed as a diabetic.  Now my fasting sugar is 6.5mmol/L.  My diabetes is definitely under control.
False.  Blood sugar levels vary a lot depending on the food that is recently eaten, and on the number of hours elapsed before the blood test.  It is so easy to delude onself into believing that the problem is well controlled -  just fast longer, and the blood sugar drops more.

12.  The doctor didn’t detect any sugar in my fasting urine this morning.  My diabetes is under good control.
See no. 4.  A lot of moderate diabetics have their fasting sugar levels below 10, so the sugar does not spill over into the urine.

Get your diabetic information from your doctor, not from your friends!

Testing For Diabetes

It is far better to have the early symptoms of diabities when one is suffering from the disease than not to have any diabetic symptoms at all.  This is because if one does not have symptoms of diabetic disease, one does not feel unwell, there is no visit to the doctor to confirm or diagnose the disease, and one is at great risk of complications occurring due to untreated diabetes.

Symptoms that one should watch out for in early diabities:  sudden weight loss or gain, thirst, increased urination (you wake up several times nightly to pee), increased appetite, tiredness, increased frequency of fungus infections in the body, a reduction of healing time for wounds.

In late diabities, the symptoms will be those of complications – usually these are not reversible.  Thus one may present with poor vision, blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes.

Diagnosis is simple enough.  Go to your doctor after a 12 hour fast.  Get a fasting sugar blood level done on the spot in the clinic.  If the level is more than 5.5mmol per litre, you are diabetic.  Whether you have symptoms or not is immaterial.  Urine tests to diagnose diabetes are unreliable.

A lot can be said for routine testing for diabetes for the general public.  This will detect a great deal of previously undiagnosed diabetics, and early treatment of this serious disease helps a great deal in preventing, or at the very least delaying, the onset of diabetic complications.