Al­most every­one I meet bom­bards me with ques­tions on di­a­betes and on oth­er dis­eases, and while I gen­uine­ly un­der­stand the rea­sons for their con­cern, doubt and fear, I re­as­sur­ing­ly ut­ter to them, "You may have di­a­betes, but di­a­betes or any dis­ease does not have you. As mind-bog­gling as this state­ment may sound, I have proven this to be true even in my own day to day life. You may now re­alise that I am not phys­i­cal­ly or emo­tion­al­ly de­tached from your fear and con­cern, and that "the fear fac­tor" is def­i­nite­ly not go­ing to help you.

A cou­ple of years ago, I had the ho­n­our of vol­un­teer­ing in the Oba­ma-Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion thrust in Health and Hu­man Ser­vices, and I clear­ly re­call the ques­tions and con­cerns of the small groups of par­tic­i­pants who were lit­er­al­ly yearn­ing for re­li­able in­for­ma­tion and ad­vice re­gard­ing their own af­flic­tions. I ex­plained to them that I will nev­er tell any­one of them, "Take this cap­sule three times a day af­ter meals." Much to their sur­prise, I be­gan to ed­u­cate them about their own bod­ies and the mir­a­cle of self-heal­ing us­ing the mind, healthy nu­tri­tion, ap­pro­pri­ate phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and the like. I went on to ex­plain that no dis­ease acts in a vac­u­um, but that it is a part of oth­er af­flic­tions that may have dif­fer­ent caus­es or causative agents.

With di­rect ref­er­ence to di­a­betes, the good news is that un­like the mis­in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic are­na that there is no cure for di­a­betes, I humbly state that in ad­di­tion to di­a­betes, every oth­er dis­ease could be con­trolled and even cured if it is "at­tacked" in the ear­ly stages. In fact, I have known of peo­ple who "took the bull by the horns," paid clos­er at­ten­tion to their food choic­es, lifestyle, phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty rou­tines all with­in the scope of a pos­i­tive out­look on life and they suc­cess­ful­ly "con­quered the di­a­betes night­mare." I ac­tu­al­ly saw it hap­pen be­fore my very eyes. Ex­perts state that di­a­betes is not just one dis­ease, and that it is a sig­nal of oth­er un­der­ly­ing af­flic­tions or com­pli­ca­tions. For in­stance, Type 2 di­a­betes is now rarely called "adult on­set," be­cause of the fact that many chil­dren are now af­flict­ed by it.

The fact of the mat­ter is that if peo­ple do not take no­tice of their food choic­es, food por­tions, their dai­ly lifestyle and suf­fi­cient phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, they could eas­i­ly be­come obese and there­by open the gate­way for this dis­ease. In many parts of the world, adults and chil­dren rarely play games that re­quire phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty or move­ment. On the con­trary, they pre­fer to play video games and/or spend hours slumped in front of the tele­vi­sion set. By not walk­ing, stretch­ing, and bend­ing even as part of their dai­ly rou­tine, the bel­ly bulge be­gins to ap­pear and over­all weight gain in­creas­es. It fol­lows that re­gard­less of your age, rapid weight gain and at­ten­dant in­ac­tiv­i­ty will pave the way for di­a­betes and its many com­pli­ca­tions. In­deed, the lat­ter could be rather scary. Nowa­days, for ex­am­ple, even younger di­a­bet­ics are be­com­ing am­putees main­ly due to the fact that they're ei­ther un­der­e­d­u­cat­ed or to­tal­ly mis­in­formed re­gard­ing foot health care. The lat­ter not on­ly ap­plies to di­a­bet­ics but al­so to non-di­a­bet­ics.

With the dai­ly hus­tle and bus­tle of life, we tend to for­get our feet of­ten with se­ri­ous con­se­quences! Do we ac­tu­al­ly look at our beau­ti­ful feet? Few peo­ple do. In my ca­pac­i­ty of a Health Care/Di­a­betes ed­u­ca­tor, I nev­er hes­i­tate to ed­u­cate my chil­dren, rel­a­tives and friends about ap­pro­pri­ate foot health care. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly I even give them a free foot mas­sage us­ing the age-old tech­niques of ac­cu­pres­sure and re­flex­ol­o­gy. I doubt that they con­tin­ue to do it on a dai­ly ba­sis. Please love your feet the same way you love your face. I have on­ly skimmed the sur­face of Health Care/Di­a­betes ed­u­ca­tion, but I hope that most of you now re­alise that you are re­spon­si­ble for your own health and that if you ne­glect your health your bod­ies will soon be­gin to show signs of ne­glect.

John J Singh

jjs­ingh2005@ya­hoo.com

John J Singh PhD, MSHS, HD (Hy­gio­physi­cian), DipEd is a Di­a­betes/Dis­ease Ed­u­ca­tor, foot care ed­u­ca­tor, prac­ti­tion­er and holis­tic nu­tri­tion­ist. He is a pro­fes­sion­al mem­ber of the Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Nu­tri­tion­al Con­sul­tants; and, a pro­fes­sion­al mem­ber of the Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Di­a­betes Ed­u­ca­tors.