Category: diabetes

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diabetes doctor patient relationship health patient care patients

Matters of empathy

While I don’t know much about diabetes, I believe that any chronic illness and the care required of it demands empathy from all involved — most importantly the primary physician. In September, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) posted a study out of Parma, Italy which looked at nearly 21,000 diabetes patients. 242 doctors in the study were tested for empathy via a questionnaire.

Here is the really amazing part: the rate of complications for patients with highly empathic doctors was nearly 2/3 of those with less empathic doctors. “Although empathic engagement is important in patient care regardless of physicians’ specialty, it is more critical in the primary care setting, which requires long-term physician–patient encounters and continuity of care.” —Academic Medicine, September 2012

There is something nice about knowing that bedside manner matters as much as I’d always assumed. The New York Times Nicholas Bakalar did a great short piece on the study here too.

(Thanks Julie for pointing me to this study!)

Photo by Christiana Care / Creative Commons

Categories
diabetes health health care healthcare

Protecting a broken system.

Check out this sweet and short article from a small business owner in the midwest (US): Small business desperate for healthcare reform

A simple look at how protecting a system that discriminates is not only senseless—but cruel.

“I have had to watch two of my best employees suffer from illness — one from diabetes, the other from Crohn’s disease. I was sadly unable to provide these hard-working men with health care, leading them to refuse critical medical services.”

More here: southbendtribune.com

Categories
chronic illness crohn's disease diabetes

You better eat your Wheaties.

So this definitely isn’t brain surgery, but whether you have Crohn’s disease or you’re a completely healthy person, we all sometimes need to be brought back to the basics of our diet. My parents always made us eat breakfast and it is still ingrained in me to do so. And whether it’s coincidence or not, my entire family is super lean and very healthy. With that in mind, I was reading this on the Divine Caroline sight yesterday, and just thought I’d share: Eat Breakfast, Lose Weight

Breakfast gets your metabolism going—it really doesn’t get more simple than that, but if you want to be more complex—than pay attention to this info: “Researchers at the American Heart AssociationÂ’s Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention Conference found that people who eat breakfast are significantly less likely to be obese and diabetic than those who usually donÂ’t. They found that obesity and insulin resistance syndrome rates were 35 percent to 50 percent lower among people who ate breakfast every day compared to those who usually skipped it.”