Risk reduction involves not only the one obvious behavior of stopping smoking, but also having constant and scheduled contact with your healthcare provider is very important. Diabetes does not sit still; it's a progressive disease. And changes occur as you age and also affect the diabetes. Therefore, it's important to make sure that you have vision checked, dental checks, your feet checked every single time you see a physician, getting the appropriate labs that you need. Following the guidelines for appropriate care for people with diabetes is a shared responsibility between the patient and the healthcare provider.
7. Healthy Coping
People with diabetes, they have a greater incidence of depression. And it's unclear if the depression precedes the diabetes diagnosis or occurs afterward, but it is a safe bet that many people will face a bout of depression during their course of a lifetime with diabetes.
And it's important to recognize that this is normal, that this does occur. It's often because of the daily regimen that people have to do and it can wear on them.
So healthy coping is the ability to make sure that you feel comfortable enough to discuss it with your healthcare provider, that it isn't a stigma, it's part of life with the disease. There's help for depression. And healthy coping is a team approach. We all need to be able to recognize it and bring it to a patient's attention and help them go through these rough times.
ANNOUNCER: Successful self-care behaviors can help people with diabetes lead healthy, active lives. But professional diabetes educators caution: Just because they've listed seven steps, people with diabetes shouldn't feel they need to do them all right away, or do them all perfectly. Instead, take those steps you know you can be successful at, and build from there.
