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Health professionals are almost universally convinced that numerous populations in the world, not just in the West, are at risk from obesity and diabetes. Not only are more and more middle-aged and elderly people getting diabetes, but younger people are too.

The age groups getting diabetes are becoming younger, but there does not seem to be any national advice from governments or nation’s environmental health agencies. If these health authorities have produced recommendations, they are not widely broadcast.

At one time most people who became diabetic came from parents which had a history of diabetes. However, nowadays practically everybody has a chance of becoming diabetic.

The obese are at risk, say the doctors, but they are not so sure why other, thinner groups are developing it too.

Why are thin, active, apparently healthy individuals becoming first unable to regulate the quantity of sugar in their blood and thus entering the pre-diabetic stage? Lots of these people will be diabetic sooner or later.

The diagnosis of diabetes used to be a sentence to a slow, drawn out death with amputations and organ failure on the way to an early death. Blindness, cataracts, kidney failure and the amputation of toes and feet were normal.

Fortunately, this is no longer true because of advances in the understanding of the disease and medical break-throughs. Part of the treatment without medication involves a change in lifestyle meaning increased exercise and attention to diet.

However, for those unable to cure themselves through lifestyle changes, there are drugs, hormones and technology:

One solution, the traditional solution, is to inject insulin, because diabetes is caused by a deficiency of insulin. First, the diabetic has to work out how much insulin he requires and then supply it.

The insulin may be delivered by injection, but also by insulin pump, which measures the blood-sugar level and delivers the insulin automatically. There are also insulin inhalers which can provide instant relief with fast-acting insulin in the mouth.

Insulin tablets are new, because insulin is digested by the stomach as it is a protein. These new pills are covered in a polymer to get it past the digestive juices of the stomach. There is also a assortment of fat-acting and slow-acting ‘mixtures’ of different insulins for different people and different conditions.

It is, of course, necessary to know the condition of your blood before you take insulin and some other medications and this has to be done with a monitor or a swab, but the latter is less accurate.

There are pain-free glucose test kits, which are not invasive and you can also buy a wristwatch-type monitor that continuously checks your blood-sugar level and shows the results on the watch face

The drugs firms and the hi-tec companies are researching methods to make more money from the growing number of diabetics, so there are promises of break-throughs on the technological and the medical fronts all the time.

If you are dissatisfied with the therapy you are experiencing, change your physician to one who is interested in diabetes and who follows the latest ideas.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with Diabetes Cook Books. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Cookbooks For Diabetics.

We are all encouraged to eat foodstuffs with more fibre, because dietary fibre is a vital ingredient for keeping our bodies healthy. It is especially useful for the colon.

Since attention to detail in diet is even more important to diabetics, it stands to reason that fibre is even more important to diabetics as well. And, indeed, diabetics are counselled to consume lots of fibre.

Fibre will also defer the on-set of diabetes in those people who are in a pre-diabetic state. Fibre assists reduce the blood-sugar levels naturally, so it will help everyone in their quest to maintain healthy blood.

The way it does this is fairly simple to understand. Fibre is more difficult to digest than the remainder of the sugars and starches that surround it, so it has the effect of staying in your digestive system for longer, thereby making you feel ‘full’ longer, and it is burned very slowly thus reducing spikes in your blood sugar level.

Blood-sugar spikes are bad news for anyone who does not want a spike in order to accomplish a quest, like a weight-lifter or a sprinter. Spikes in children may lead to instances of hyperactivity in children.

The best sort of fibre is soluble fibre. This sort of fibre is found in:

grain that has not been excessively processed to get rid of the husk, so brown rice, whole wheat bread, cereals and pasta.

‘dry’ fresh fruits, not necessarily dried fruits, like bananas, mangoes, pineapple and apples

beans, lentils, legumes and pulses are stuffed almost full of dietary fibre and are easily added to soups and stews.

Another way of feeling ‘full’ so that you are able to reduce the craving for a substantial meal is drinking water. Substitute plain tap water or bottled water for fizzy drinks. Your body might need the extra water to help it digest the extra soluble fibre that you are eating.

Fibre assists in all dietary situations, but is incorporated into the calculations that some diets use. For example, if you are counting carbohydrates as opposed to calories, you will have a limit or target number of carbs you may consume in a day.

This is 20 carbs a day in the initial phase of the Atkins diet. Some diets will permit you to subtract the amount of fibre from the total number of carbs for the purpose of your calculations.

So, for instance, you may consume 25 carbs, and, as long as the food contains at least five grammes of fibre, you have not broken the guidelines of the diet. You will have to check whether your particular diet allows for this variation.

It sounds like another burden to have to count fibre too as everything else you have to take into account before you may eat anything, but it will become second nature after a few weeks or months.

The best way to get started is to pick up a small guide that will fit in your pocket or bag so that you can look into it frequently.

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Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with Diabetes Cook Books. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Cookbooks For Diabetics.

Not very long ago, it was not at all out of the ordinary to see blind people strolling along the streets tap-tapping away with their white sticks, being guided by a dog, normally a Labrador, but I have not seen anyone like that in Britain for years, as far as I remember.

That has to become a good thing; it has to mean that we are starting to cure or at least improve most types of blindness.

My aunty had cataracts for years when I was a kid in the Sixties – it was just one of those facts of life. Some individuals got them when they were old and others did not.

My brother’s mother-in-law had cataracts in the late Nineties and she was put on a two year waiting list to have them taken away, but at least she had hope and they were going to be taken away free of charge.

I do not know of anyone else that has eye trouble except myself. I could not get my glasses clean one day and then a friend said he saw a white spot in one of my eyes. He drove me to the hospital and the doctor said that I had ‘premature senile cataracts’.

Well, I live in Thailand now and he did not use those precise words. He told me that the cataracts were because I was prematurely senile.

I asked him if that was what he actually intended; he looked it up in a book and we both had a hearty laugh about it, although he never actually corrected himself.

My condition turned out to be a bit more serious than only cataracts, but when I went from the local hospital to a major hospital in Pattaya, the surgeon saw me within 30 minutes and asked me if I wanted the cataracts taken away.

I said that I did and she was willing to do the operation there and then. I had it postponed for 24 hours, but she would have sorted my eye out that day in a 30 minute operation, which does not require anaesthetic. I think that that was marvelous.

We have come a long way from routinely seeing blind people on the street and putting up with cataracts through a two-year waiting list to immediate removal of cataracts by laser surgery in 40-50 years.

At least we have in the Developed World and in the East as well, if you have the money. There are still millions of people in Asia and especially in Africa suffering blindness and partial blindness for the sake of an easy 30 minute operation.

Two weeks after my surgical treatment, my other eye started to cloud over. It was as if it had been holding on with its last scrap of strength until I got his mate sorted out.

I had that one done last year and when I was permitted to take off my patch and look about me with two decent eyes again for the first time in a decade, I could not believe that I had forgotten how bright the world really is and that I had not noticed how dingy my world had gotten.

If you are worried about an eye operation, do not be. What you will experience when you are able to see properly again will make all the apprehension seem ridiculous and if you have the opportunity to give someone their eyesight back, please do it.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, and is now involved with 500 Delicious Diabetic Recipes. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Easy Diabetic Meals

The foremost difficulty for diabetics is not the lack of insulin, it is the result of the deficiency of insulin and that result is that the blood becomes ultra-saturated with sugar (or glucose).

Everyone’s blood has sugar in it, the blood carries this energy to the limbs and organs to keep them functioning, but there is a fine balance between enough and too much.

Insulin controls that balance, so if you do not make enough insulin, as diabetics do not, your blood becomes thick and sugary. That does not sound too bad on the face of it.

Maybe a diabetic should be able to run further and faster than others with all that extra energy being pumped around the body.

However, it does not work like that. The dense, syrupy blood does not get into the thin veins and capillaries, which causes a lack of energy in these places, which are often at the very ends of your body and in internal and external organs.

Skin, hair, eyes, teeth and toes are all starved of the sugars they need to keep them going, not just to keep them super-fit. The places with the finest blood vessels start to go first.

Not only that, but where the blood does reach can become more easily infected, because the bacteria think it is party time with all that extra food/energy in the blood.

A small infection that the body;s immune system could usually have dealt with in a day or two soon gets out of hand. This is a major problem for diabetics and one of the areas that is easily infected is the mouth.

Without the regular dental check-ups that affluent people can afford, the mouth would frequently be infected, as it still is in poorer countries and among poorer groups in rich countries. Children and older people are always needing fillings, extractions and infections sorted out.

For diabetics who do not seek appropriate dental care this may soon be a major difficulty. Smoking exacerbates the difficulty. The problems truly start to mount up for smokers over the age of 45 when dental concerns normally start to resurface after 20 odd years of relatively healthy teeth and gums.

Periodontitis is especially dangerous for diabetics. Periodontitis is an infection that affects the bones and gums in the mouth. It manifests itself in receding, bleeding gums. This exposes the blood rich in sugars to infection. Diabetics ought to inform their dentist of their condition and go for a check-up every six months.

Diabetics can easily lose all their teeth if they get periodontitis and it is readily done with high blood sugar levels. The first sign of such dental issues is bleeding teeth or gums.

It is imperative to regulate the blood sugar level to as close to normal as you can to avoid these and other complications and the two first keys to use are diet and exercise, otherwise you may have to resort to medication.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of topics, and is now involved with diabetic friendly meals. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Cookbooks For Diabetics.