Both Type I, or juvenile, diabetes, and type II, or insulin-resistant, diabetes have a plethora of complications. Even though the two types of diabetes have different causes and somewhat different biological effects, both types can cause problems ranging from heart disease, serious eye problems such as diabetic retinopathy, and susceptibility to infections, circulation problems, gangrene, and strokes.

The most important way to avoid or minimize complications is to keep one’s blood sugar carefully regulated. For some type II diabetics this may be able to be accomplished with diet alone, while others may need a combination of diet and an oral medication. For type I diabetics, a carefully restricted diet must be augmented by regular insulin injections. In addition to merely monitoring blood sugar and tracking food, making sensible food choices can help considerably. Eating a piece of raw fruit instead of drinking fruit juice and choosing whole grains over refined pastas and breads will provide valuable nutrients while having a less dramatic impact on blood sugar.

Beyond diet and medication, other things can be done to minimize problems. Caring immediately for any scratches, wounds, or other skin problems is important, as is protecting oneself from injury to the skin and to the extremities in the first place. For people susceptible to skin problems, specially created diabetic socks provide a supportive fit while helping keep the feet dry to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria and fungus. Avoiding stress and getting enough sleep also helps the body cope with the disease.

Of course, proper medical care is also important. Like many serious chronic diseases, diabetes requires regular medical appointments with an endocrinologist. It’s also important to communicate with the doctor about acute illnesses that crop up, including colds, the flu, and other common infectious diseases. A simple cold can make a non-diabetic individual miserable for a week; a diabetic, on the other hand, can have his or her blood sugar levels thrown off wildly, and need serious adjustment.

The bottom line for diabetics: eat right, monitor your blood sugar and medication levels carefully, care for all skin problems, get enough sleep, and most importantly, don’t go it alone. Find a good doctor, follow his or her recommendations, and then follow up frequently. Diabetes is a serious illness with potentially serious complications, but being on top of it can mean avoiding many, if not all, of the problems that can crop up.

Aldene Fredenburg is a freelance writer living in southwestern New Hampshire. She has written numerous articles for local and regional newspapers and for a number of Internet websites, including Tips and Topics. She expresses her opinions periodically on her blog, http://beyondagendas.blogspot.com

Tag: healthhealth

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This article is about depression from an unusual perspective. It is about the powerlessness and hopelessness of modern
psychological science and research. The importance of an holistic approach to mental and physical health will be explained.

Do you know, what really startled me since I was a child?

It is actually very simple but profound at the same time. I could see that there were problems in the adults’ lifes. That was one thing.
The other was that they never seemed to really get beyond them. My first assumption about grown ups was that they are really
smart people. I mean, they were grown up and I was a kid. You admire them. Anytime they want they can turn on the TV or take the
car for a ride, just for fun. They can go to sleep whenever they want or they can stay awake till the morning dawn. They are gods…

My father used to comment on the radio news. From what I could hear I realized that adult people are not what they seem to be.
They lacked knowledge, although they heavily pretended to have some. Adults build huge hospitals, but the number of diseased
people is increasing. They do a lot of research, but things get worse. They are holding big conferences, but there is no solution to
poverty, hunger and pollution. The destruction of the planet continues, unhampered. They scientifically study the human mind for
years, but still they are fighting over minor issues and killing each other. Depression is rampant.

The experts are wearing white coats of authority and they look really impressive. But the picture is deceiving. They are as helpless as
the rest. They have been told that depression is caused by some material disfunction in the body. They wouldn’t admit it, but this
theory is the cause of their own latent or acute depression.

There is one important saying: “Doctor, heal thyself”. So, obviously, an expert treating depression in a person should be free of
that mental condition himself. But is this really the case? Are our experts examples in their own lives? Have they achieved the
peace of mind and the happiness that we are looking for?

To be quite frank: Our mental health experts are haunted by depression themselves.

Of course, their job is demanding and it is hard to stay untouched from all these unfortunate human destinies. But that is no
excuse. For a health practitioner it is of prime necessity to become a strong, positive and loving personality. It is not enough to just
“know” one’s field of “expertise”. Life operates on rules that cannot be managed properly just by some theoretical knowledge. A
doctor abusing nicotine and alcohol is as unbelievable as a psychologist suffering from a minority complex, being arrogant and
insensitive.

People tell me about their experience with mental and physical health practitioners. They feel ignored, misunderstood and treated
like an innate object. That’s how modern science looks at it’s objects: things, which have to be manipulated into proper function.
People feel that the experts lack self esteem and hide behind academic degrees and honors. They rightly perceive all this as
symptoms of personal weakness. How to develop real trust in such a person?

The formal training in any given area was much less in former times. But that does not mean that we have become advanced.
Modern education has created highly trained specialists in their respective fields, but being too much focused on a tiny segment of
reality they seem to have lost the whole big picture. At the same time they have lost themselves.

A person is not just ears or heart or mind. A person is an individual being. And what does that mean? A person cannot be divided.
A person is one. Treating a depressed person without this consideration will only lead to frustration and more depression.

Depression spreads like wildfire. People seem to get lost in the rat race and the competition. Survival of the fittest. They drown in
the struggle for existence. The one and only thing a depressed person needs is unalloyed love and compassion. No one will learn
this at university. The students will learn about material processes in the body, in the brain. But they will learn little or nothing about
the person possessing the body or brain. In this way they will not learn anything about themselves, too. They will look at
depression with the arrogance and helplessness of a lost soul. How should they be able to help?

A psychologist, a coach, a trainer, a priest, a doctor: they all have to understand what life really is. They have to thoroughly
understand themselves first. They have to get rid of their own depression and hopelessness deeply buried in themselves. They
actually have to become free and independent loving persons. That is the real challenge: How to transform oneself into a great
personality. Theoretical knowledge alone is useless.

Friedrich Asen is a spiritual counsellor, coach and author since 20 years. He lives in Austria near Vienna. If you are looking for more quality information about the subject of depression, visit his website http://www.overcome-depression-now.com

Tags: depression, mental healthdepression, mental health

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Most people with health insurance, especially employer paid health insurance, really don’t know what their health care costs are. Furthermore, in many cases, they are limited in which health providers (doctors, hospitals, pharmacies etc) they can use.

Most people are locked into a network of doctors. They know what the co-pay is, but have no idea what the doctor actually charges.

When insured consumers are hospitalized, they rarely see the bill. They don’t know if the insurance company was overcharged or not. There are firms that audit hospital bills for insurers and self insured companies. They get paid a percentage of what they save on the bill payer by finding overcharges, duplicate charges and the like. The last I heard these firms were still making lots of money.

Overcharging, whether deliberate or not, by doctors and hospitals drive up health care costs for all. (So do malpractice suits, but that’s another story.)

In order to give consumers more direct control not only over their health costs, but in the choice of which doctor they can see or which hospital they can enter, Congress enacted the Health Savings Account Availability Act. As of the beginning of 2004, individuals who are not otherwise insured can have Health Savings Accounts (HSA) , which carry with them some very attractive tax benefits.

An individual can set up an HSA for himself or his family. An employer can add an HSA option to the so-called cafeteria benefit plan it may already offer.

The money put into the plan is before taxes, including Social Security, if part of an employer plan. Otherwise it is a above-the-line deduction, meaning you don’t have to itemize your deductions to get the tax break and that the deduction is not subject to the phase-out rules that make many itemized deductions unavailable to high wage earners.

The plan is set up like an IRA. A trustee approved by the IRS must be used. Money put in the plan grows tax free and funds withdrawn for qualified medical expenses are also tax free. Unlike the older Flexible Savings Accounts offered in employer cafeteria plans, you don’t have to spend the money put into the account by year end or otherwise lose whatever’s left. Money can be rolled over from year to year. This can allow for a nice chunk of money to accumulate that can be withdraw tax free at age 65.

In order to qualify, the individual or family must purchase a high deducible health insurance policy. These are special policies that have a minimum deductible of $1000 to a maximum of $5000 for an individual and $2000 to $10,000 for a family. The higher the deductible, the lower the premium.

Individuals can deduct the lesser of $2250 or the deductible on the policy: for married couples or families it is double that. If over 55, the deduction is $600 higher for individual and $1200 higher for couples and will continue to rise at $100 a year until 2009, where it will be capped at $1000 for individuals and $2000 for families.

The money in the HSA cannot be used to pay the premiums for this policy except in certain circumstances (basically when you’re unemployed). It is meant to meet the deductible, co-pays, drug costs, eyeglasses or any other medical expense that could be itemized on an individual tax return as a medical expense.

Money withdrawn in excess of qualified medical expenses is taxed as income and subject to a 10% penalty, unless the owner is disabled or over 65. Any money in the account at death is added to the taxable estate.

There are no income limits on this plan. If started early, when you are still young and healthy a substantial amount of money could accumulate to either meet higher medical costs as you get older or to use to supplement your income.

It pays to compare the costs of this plan with whatever your insurance you have now. It might turn out that your employer’s plan is still cheaper and you might want to keep it. Or you might want to consider HSA’s for their portability (you carry it from job to job without cost or loss of any contributions) and the tax benefit of having another vehicle to shelter income and capital growth, while giving you more control over the cost and quality of your health care.

Chris Cooper is a retired attorney who has spent several periods of his life deep in debt. At http://www.credit-yourself.com he tries to pass on some of the knowledge he picked up in his journey to become debt free.

Tags: health savings accounts, health savings plans, hsahealth savings accounts, health savings plans, hsa

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