Diabetes: A Double Whammy for Women!

It is tough enough being a woman: ask any woman! If you don’t believe them, ask any man if he would like to turn into a woman. With rare exceptions, the answer will be a resounding NO!

Similarly, it is tough enough having diabetes. It is a disease which can affect almost any organ in the body, and often does, causing untold misery all over the world.

But combine being a woman with having diabetes, and you have a double whammy which is as unfair as it is real. Because diabetes places a unique burden on women.

Some data

There are about 246 million people with diabetes in the world. More than half are women. At least a third of people with diabetes do not know they have the disease.

Mother and child

Unlike men, women with diabetes have a unique problem: Diabetes can affect them, as well as their unborn children.

Diabetes can cause a miscarriage. It can also lead to babies born with birth defects.

Gestational diabetes

Women who have never had diabetes before can still develop it during pregnancy: a condition called gestational diabetes.

This happens in 2-5% of all pregnancies.

Women who develop gestational diabetes have a 20-50% risk of developing type 2 diabetes 5-10 years after delivering their baby.

Women who give birth to a baby weighing 9 pounds or more are at a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes later.

Control & complications

Several complications of diabetes are more severe in women than in men. Although proof is lacking, it is felt by many experts that this could be due to the quality of control of diabetes.

Starting in their mid-teens and persisting for the rest of their lives, women show signs of poorer control of their diabetes than men. The exact reasons for this are unclear, but it is possible that it could partly be due to the dual responsibility of many women to cope with both their diabetes and the care of their families.

Death

It does not get any more serious than this. Women with diabetes have a higher all-cause mortality rate than men with diabetes.

Heart disease

Diabetes is a more common cause of coronary artery disease in women than in men. Before menopause, estrogen levels in women are thought to protect women against heart disease. Experts believe that diabetes may change those protective effects of estrogens.

In women between the ages of 45-64 years, there is a 3-7 times higher risk of coronary disease in the presence of diabetes.

Heart attack

Compared to women without diabetes, diabetic women are more likely to have a heart attack, and that too at a younger age.

A greater burden

Diabetes places a larger burden on women of risk factors leading to heart disease, as compared to men.

Obesity, high blood pressure and cholesterol problems are more prevalent in diabetic women than men.

47% of diabetic women are obese, with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, compared to 25% of all women.

Lipid/cholesterol problems

Diabetic women have a greater burden of lipid disturbances which increase the risk of heart disease. Their “good” cholesterol (HDL) is more likely to be low, their Apo A1 protein is low, their Apo B protein is high, their triglyceride levels are usually high, and they have more small, dense, LDL (bad) cholesterol particles. Bingo, more coronary disease!

Outcomes

Not only do women diabetics have a higher risk of developing heart disease, but once these ladies do get heart disease, their prognosis is worse than that of diabetic men with heart disease.

The eyes have it

Diabetes increases the risk of developing eye problems, ranging from mild to severe, at times proceeding on to blindness.

The risk of developing severe eye complications of diabetes is higher in girls and women than in boys and men.

Let’s not fall

Women with diabetes have an increased risk of hip fracture.

Type 1 diabetes increases the risk of hip fracture 6.4 times, and type 2 diabetes by a factor of 2.2. If you have ever used insulin, or if you have had type 2 diabetes for 12 years or longer, your hip fracture risk is higher.

An ounce of prevention

News flash from the Nurses’ Health Study: Type 2 Diabetes is preventable!

Listen up:  90% of type 2 diabetes in women is due to 5 risk factors:

• Excess weight
• Lack of exercise
• Less than healthy diet
• Smoking
• Abstaining from alcohol

What to do?

• Control your weight. If you are overweight, your risk of developing type 2 diabetes increases seven-fold. If you are obese, your risk of developing diabetes is 20-40 times higher than that of your friends who have a normal weight.
• Losing 7-10% of your current weight will cut your risk of developing diabetes in half.
• Turn off your TV and start walking around! Walk briskly for half an hour daily, and your diabetes risk will drop by 30%.
• On the other hand, if you choose not to be active, and opt for watching TV for 2 hours instead, your diabetes risk will climb by 20%.
• Make 4 changes to your diet.
• Eat whole grains, rather than highly processed carbohydrates. The Nurses’ Health Study revealed that women eating 2-3 servings of whole grains daily had a 30% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
• Two to three servings of brown rice weekly can cut your diabetes risk by 11%.
• Choose water, tea, or coffee instead of sugary drinks. In the Nurses’ Health Study II, women who drank one or more sugar-sweetened drink daily had an 80% higher risk of type 2 diabetes than women who drank these beverages only once a month.
• In the Black Women’s Health Study, women consuming 2 or more fruit drinks daily had a 31% increase in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with those who did so less than once a month.
• Choose polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats over the other kinds.
• Reduce your consumption of red meat and processed meat. A meta-analysis of several studies suggests that eating a 3 ounce daily serving of red meat (a piece of steak the size of a deck of cards) can raise your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 20%. The good news from this same analysis is that if you swap the red meat or processed meat in your diet for nuts, low-fat dairy, poultry, fish, or whole grains, you can reduce your diabetes risk by up to 35%.
• If you smoke, please stop! Smokers have a 50% higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Heavy smokers have an even greater risk.
• Moderate amounts of alcohol can help. One drink a day in women, and up to 2 in men, can increase the efficiency of the action of the body’s insulin in getting sugar out of your blood stream and into the cells.
• However, if you do not drink alcohol, do not start!

 

So watch your weight & move around.

You CAN beat this disease!