Related Disease and Diabetes Complications
People with diabetes often have other health risk factors such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and kidney disease. Your healthcare team will encourage you to follow your meal plan and physical activity program, use your medications and monitor your blood glucose regularly to keep it in as normal a range as possible. Why is this so important? Because poorly managed diabetes can lead to a host of long-term complications — among these are heart attacks, strokes, blindness, kidney failure and blood vessel disease.
Fortunately, a nationwide study completed over a 10-year period—The Diabetes Control and Clinical Trial—showed that if people keep their blood glucose as close to normal as possible, they can reduce their risk of developing some of these complications by 50 percent or more. Out of all diabetes complicaions, Asian Americans are especially at risk for developing chronic kidney disease.
But even the very best control may not be able to eliminate all complications, and the risk increases with the length of time you have diabetes. The following is a list of complications and the organ that is affected:
| Complication |
Organ Affected |
|
Cataract |
Lens of the eye |
| Coronary Artery Disease |
Heart |
| Dermopathy Macroangiopathy |
Skin |
| Erectile Dysfunction |
Sexual organs |
| Nephropathy |
Kidney |
| Neuropathy |
Nerves |
| Peripheral Vascular Disease |
Blood vessels of legs and feet |
| Retinopathy |
Eyes |
| Stroke |
Brain |
|
