Oh how I wish my husband would have had access to this kind of information when he was diagnosed at 13! Heck, even if we would have known about it when we married at 19! We are blessed to have learned about it when he was 39, but by that time we were ,and still are, fighting insulin resistance and reversing retinapothy, etc.
Healthcare advocacy has seen a worrying trend in Australia of late. Each Aussie State and Territory used to have a peak body for systemic healthcare advocacy. The peak bodies attracted members and trained them in healthcare advocacy and provided a resource to healthcare parties regarding who amongst those trained might be the best 'fit" for particular committees and the peak body was a clearing house as it were for communication about systemic health care and a voice for important care issues to be raised more efficiently with Govt health. For example - a serious chemotherapy under-dosing scandal at a South Oz hospital was only looked into when the peak body alerted to this issue by individuals whose concerns fell on deaf ears, made strong representation. Similarly for a serious lack of duty of care at a nursing home(leading to a Royal Commission) and several other serious, ignored-by-Govt incidents. Now we see that Govt funding for such bodies in two Aussie states (South Oz and Victoria) have been cut and one agencies has closed and the other soon to close whilst these State Govts have handed 'community' health advocacy funding and responsibility to the Health Depts of these States - and the "nuisance' of such bodies (the word is a quote from one State's dept of Health") have been silenced. And training and appointment of individual community advocates occurs via training by the Health Dept, and limited to ridiculous standards (e.g. a 5 plus decades of lived experience of diabetes and the ability to manage well enough to stay out of hospital earns no cigars for becoming a hospital advocate)!! I see a pattern of a Health Dept avoiding challenge, innovation and excellence of care whilst paying lip service to "community involvement" and scant recognition of 'persons with lived experience of one or more chronic health conditions' (conditions which account for the majority of the health budget) The oft-mentioned fact that Health authorities invariably perform empire building for individual career advancement and to justify their budget spending is an obvious result of the zany thinking of politicians who have been distracted from the grassroots and needs of their voters and population by shiny baubles of poorly thought out data collection and the wonder of biased data interpretation. Diabetes Australia have been slow to this party - favouring the very low calorie diets over low carb approaches - whilst being sponsored by a company who manufactures a vey low calorie formula - but with recent development of TCR guideline for those with T2D by the Australian Diabetes Society (use in TIDs is relatively contraindicate, ? because mainstream medicine is not up to date ?), now Diabetes Australia and its branches have come on board and affiliated with the only on-line TCR program operating in Oz. Meanwhile even with this shifting towards a new paradigm, my individual advocacy plus that of an aware clinician group in South Oz, responsible in great part for the new ADS guidlines, the South Oz health dept have refused to consider adding a StateWide Clinical Network for Diabetes to its other Networks (e.g. Chronic Pain, Cardiac Care, Adolescent Health, Cancer, Palliative Care) - too difficult, we would new d to split off the Prevention side of it etc etc - But persistence is the key - The Chief Medical (Public Health ) Officer, himself a trained cardiologist , has listened and is prompting meetings of those with lived experience of diabetes and this group of aware clinicians to meetings with all the heads of hospital and community Diabetes Units and the South Oz health dept public health nutritionists - Yes we still have the challenge of how the national dietary high carb, low fat guidelines will be subverted but the real power I believe lays in communication to all diabetics that as patients and parents they have the right to be presented with all scientifically valid treatment options and that can absolve clinicians from not following the (unscientific) national dietary guidelines for diabetics - (patients/parents + clinicians = empowerment together ). Of course there are challenges ahead but never ignore the power of persistence !! Dear Minister of Health - why are our health professionals say that us diabetics cannot expect to attain normal blood sugars but have to suffer complications long term and pay an unwitting part in bankrupting our Aussie health system? Are you aware that due to current national nutrition guidelines that at current projections your children and grandchildren may not live as long as you do? Why is a potential saving of ? 45 million plus AUD p.a. through de-prescribing diabetes medications via application of TCR not an attractive idea??
A wonderful presentation - showing how happenstance, common sense, family values and adhesion leads and continues to lead inexorably closer towards paradigm change. Some thoughts: growth charts for children and teenagers used today come from studies in the ? 1990s in a variety of different counties but certainly during the high carb low fat food diet paradigm and where some of these countries were dependent on carby crops for much of their general diet. Can we be sure that if growth charts of those on low carb diets, even without diabetes, were available that they would be the same as the growth charts used today? And unfortunately we don't have growth charts (at least not that I can find) on Inuit, Laplanders and Masai children and teens - and climate, genetics and maybe other factors may explain just how different the apparent body morphology and growth patterns of those living in a cold climate differ from those in a hot climate. And by the way, the Masai children, teens and adults on traditional diets, assuming no factors like famine or disease, never appear to be stunted. Can dieticians explain that given the traditional Masai diet??
