Living with The Deadly Disease of Diabetes
People with diabetes are rarely to live long, because of experiencing complications of other diseases. But a diabetic patient can survive well up to the age of 90 years. What is the secret of longevity ?
Bob Krause from San Diego, a grandfather who almost entered the age of 90 years was crowned the oldest in diabetic patients with the longest life in America. He has 85 years of living with the deadly disease of diabetes. Long live the old man's secret was that he remained a regular insulin therapy without getting bored or discouraged and so keep the food.
The old man's knowledge about diabetes made no other diseases affected by complications that usually experienced by people with diabetes. The temptation of food or live carelessly can be withheld by applying the discipline of a good life. For Grandpa Krause, eating is for life not for pleasure or just lust.
Bob Krause was type 1 diabetes since the age of 5 years. Type 1 diabetes is a disease due to heredity or pancreas damage. Now he was already nearly stepped on 90 years, meaning that Krause had 85 years of living with diabetes.
"Krause has lived longer than the life expectancy of healthy people who were born normal in 1921. He knew that he had to deal with this disease and that he sees as part of his life, he does not let diabetes lead him to despair," Dr. Patricia Wu, doctors who deal with Bob Krause.
About 3 million Americans living with type 1 diabetes, a chronic disease in which the body does not make enough insulin needed to convert blood sugar into energy, so it must rely to a lifetime of insulin injections. The exact cause is unknown, although genetic and autoimmune problems play a role.
In general, the life expectancy of diabetics is reduced a lot because they have to face a high risk of serious health complications, including heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney damage and amputations. Before the discovery of insulin, a diagnosis of diabetes was a death sentence with an expected survival of only a few years.
Krause was lucky to be diagnosed with diabetes not long after the commercial production of insulin made it widely available. It was 1926, and he was 5 years old. Krause's younger brother Jackie also died because of diabetes. His life could not be saved after being diagnosed with diabetes since insulin at that time not yet available. He was diagnosed with diabetes 1 year earlier than Krause.
"I watched Jackie die by starving to death," Krause said. "Before insulin, diabetics would just die because eating doesn't make any difference. Anything that you ate couldn't be converted and you literally starved to death because your body couldn't absorb anything."
When Krause began taking insulin, he had to boil glass syringes with long needles, sharpening the point when it would go blunt with wear. Krause remembers how his mother, having lost one child to diabetes, weighed every piece of food Krause ate and kept him on a strict diet. By the time he was 6, he was giving himself injections in the arms or legs at every meal.
Since 1978, Krause has relied on his insulin pump to administer his dosages into his stomach, though he enters the amount of the dose himself rather than relying on automated doses of insulin that pumps can give throughout the day.
"I was surprised when they told me I was the oldest, because I knew there were others out there. I certainly didn't think I was a loner," Krause said after being presented the medal from The Joslin Diabetes Center.
Read also Secret of Extending Life, another way to prolong life. Water Therapy, alternate medicine therapy for diabetic patient.
Source: cbsnews
