Celebrate and honor those you know and love with diabetes, during National Diabetes Awareness Month, this November! It is a time to increase awareness about a serious disease that can lead to potentially life-threatening complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, and amputation. While there are no known measures to prevent type 1 diabetes, many people with type 2 diabetes can prevent or delay developing the disease by eating a healthy diet, exercising, and maintaining a healthy weight. Early detection of the disease can also decrease the chances of developing associated complications. You’re never too young for diabetes-it affects children as well as adults! Symptoms include frequent urination, excessive thirst, unexplained weight loss, extreme hunger, blurry vision, tingling or numbness in the hands or feet, and fatigue. Bedwetting in children who were previously toilet trained and extreme irritability can also be symptoms of diabetes. Individuals with a family history of diabetes, are overweight, live a sedentary lifestyle, are over the age of 40, and are of African American, Hispanic, American Indian, or Asian American descent are at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
The Diabetes Foundation of Mississippi (DFM) is the state’s only nonprofit health organization working to prevent diabetes and associated complications and to improve the lives of every child, every adult and every family touched by type 1 or type 2 diabetes. This is accomplished through education, medical assistance, support, advocacy and research. Every dollar raised by the DFM stays in the state to fight diabetes each day. These donations help fund a variety of programs including advocating for children with diabetes in our school system through our Sweet Subject School Diabetes Education Program and free school diabetes emergency boxes; Camp Kandu, the only diabetes camp in the state for children with diabetes and their families; and our Helping Hands patient assistance program that helps Mississippians in need with diabetes medicine and supplies.
For more information on diabetes or our foundation, contact 601-957-7878, visit www.msdiabetes.org or find us on Facebook/Instagram!
