Diabetic Care: Tight blood sugar control in the early stages of diabetes has long term beneficial effects

One of the tricky aspects of diabetes, especially in its early stages, is the lack of symptoms. Most of us find out we are diabetic from a doctor who has diagnosed the problem during a regular checkup. We didn't know, because we don't feel bad. We don't feel light headed, or sick, or sore, or....well, anything at all really. So it sometimes is hard to get it into our heads that there is something wrong, something serious that we need to take care of.

The result can be that we don't take our diabetic care seriously in the early years. Well, a recent study has shown what a major mistake that can be!

The Epidemiology of Diabetes Intervention and Complications (EDIC) study involved 1441 people with Type 1 Diabetes. Now although Type 2 patients were not involved in this particular study, the authors emphasize that there are implications for them also. In the early eighties, Type 1 diabetics were randomly assigned either to tight blood sugar control using either three insulin injections or an insulin pump, or to one to two insulin injections. Those in the one or two injection group were also moved to tight blood sugar control, but only later in the study. The study examined the difference in long term results between those on tight blood sugar control from the beginning as against those who went on a tight blood sugar control program only later on in the course of the disease.

At the end of the study, patients were carefully examined for diabetic neuropathy, problems with the feet including ulcers, sensitivity to touch, calluses and sores that patients could not feel because of nerve damage. These innocent sounding problems can be, and often are, the beginning of the road to serious nerve damage, infection and amputation.

The surprising conclusion of the study was that people who had been on tight blood sugar control from the beginning were about half as likely to contract serious neuropathic problems as those who had not, even those who eventually moved into tight blood sugar control regimens.

The lesson from this? Diabetes must be taken seriously from day 1, the moment it is diagnosed. Don't think it doesn't matter because you don't feel any symptoms, because the disease is silently working against your body. You DO have a fighting chance of keeping it under control and escaping the more serious complications, but ONLY if you make blood sugar control a serious part of your lifestyle from the beginning.