Do you have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes? Are you fed up with being told to increase your diabetes medication, but feel this only adds to your long list of drugs? Does it ever really help your diabetes control? Are you told to lose weight, but you never get anywhere?
Dr Rob Taylor is a partner at the Frome Medical Practice and having been a GP for more than 10 years, is now keen to try a different approach to help people with diabetes. Dr Taylor recognises that diabetes is not only an increasing problem for our health as a society as a whole, but also for each of us individually who has the condition.
“Hopefully, over the past week everyone would have picked up on the national media that the NHS is promoting Diabetes Prevention Week, but this is not just a condition of ‘too much sugar’ in the blood,’” explains Dr Taylor. “Diabetes is also one of the main factors in causing heart disease, vascular disease, kidney failure, blindness, dementia, and some cancers.
“The good news is that in recent years, the medical profession is learning that it can also be very effectively reversed. This does not mean ‘controlled by drugs’, but actually reversed, so that patients don’t have the condition any longer, meaning that people can actually come off the medications! Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a quick fix, but it is about lifestyle and understanding more about what we eat and how exercise can play a key part.
“The biggest positive in this, is that by making lifestyle changes, not only will it help the diabetes, but it also tends to make people feel better, think more clearly and have more energy,” says Dr Taylor. “Who wouldn’t want that?”
If you would like to learn more about this, whether you have type 2 diabetes or are a relative or carer of someone who does, Dr Taylor is providing a free educational event once a month in the evening from 6.30pm at Frome Medical Practice.
Please phone the practice during any afternoon to book yourself a place to join the event, to learn how you can start to make a huge difference to your health. The date for the next event is Monday 15th April. The following meetings are on Monday 13th May and on Monday 10th June.
