Making friends with your diabetes

Most people view their diabetes in one of three ways. Some ignore their illness (often with dangerous consequences) while others over-regulate their treatment (allowing the condition to dictate every aspect of their lives). Ideally, however, you should aim to make diabetes as natural a part of your everyday life as possible. If you can achieve this, taking your insulin will be no more of a chore than brushing your teeth.

Here, we highlight the three common methods of dealing with the illness. You should aim for the third, most positive attitude.

Ignoring it, eating what they like and only taking enough insulin to avoid feeling bad at that moment.

Many teenagers will go through this phase for a shorter or longer period of time, and some will never be able to leave it because they hate their illness. If you have this attitude when you enter adulthood, there is a risk that you will never be able to change it. Try instead to see the end of the teenage years as an opportunity when you dare to take action, and can do something about your life style and your diabetes.

Becoming absorbed and obsessed by diabetes, living only to take care of the illness as effectively as possible.

"Regulating illness", or regulopathy, is the term used when you give up your ordinary life and your goals for the future. Initially, both parents and caregivers at the clinic are under the impression that everything is going along very well. However, if the efforts to obtain a perfect glucose level prevent the young person from enjoying social activities, parties, being with friends or staying overnight with friends or at camps, things have gone too far. If this applies to you, it is high time to give yourself a break and allow yourself to start living life again.

If your diabetes is too strictly regulated, you are likely to end up having too many hypoglycaemic episodes or hypoglycaemia unawareness, which is far from healthy.

Making diabetes a natural part of everyday life.

This is easier said than done, as everyone knows who has tried. But it is possible to accept your illness without letting it take control of your life completely. If taking insulin becomes like brushing your teeth, something you do daily without really thinking about it but that you would absolutely not want to be without, then you have come a long way.

How do you go about making diabetes a part of your daily life? Learn from your friends, observe others with diabetes and you will probably find someone who has an attitude worth learning from. Just as young people used to have a period of apprenticeship when learning a profession, so you now may need to "be apprenticed" to someone who manages their diabetes in a good way.