Jill Adams has written a very nice piece about the challenge before patients with type 2 diabetes seeking to decide how much they need to do to manage their disease and prevent complications. The piece goes further and cites our group in seeking “good enough” diabetes control and mentions the work of being a patient. Ms. Adams writes:
Montori notes that a good-enough blood sugar strategy would also ease the sheer time and energy it takes to manage diabetes. Treatment regimens — with frequent doses of pills or insulin, blood-sugar monitoring and doctor visits — are complicated and burdensome, particularly in patients who may be elderly and have other chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol. One estimate of the time patients spend taking care of their condition, if they follow all the advice of their doctors, is 143 minutes per day. “That’s as much as a part-time job,” Montori says.
The link to the full article (LA Times, Oct 26 2009) is here
