Diabetes mellitus - a serious disease?

Diabetes mellitus is one of the top ten causes of death in Hong Kong.  About one in ten men are diabetic.  However, many men have not been tested for diabetes and also may not be aware that they have diabetes mellitus.  Amongst the diagnosed diabetic people, many are not aware of the high risk nature of the disease.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong recently investigated risks that threatened diabetic patients' health.  A total of eleven risk factors were studied such as sex, smoking, glucose, high blood pressure, cholesterol and cardiovascular diseases etc.  They followed up 2,934 diabetic patients for an average of five years and found that the more the number of risk factors the patients had, the higher were their chances of suffering or dying from complications or other diseases.  The good news is, with patients' active participation in controlling the disease, including adopting a healthy lifestyle, and complying with doctors' advice, many of the risk factors can be controlled and devastating diseases can be greatly prevented.

So, no matter whether you are a diabetic, or you want to lower your risk of having diabetes mellitus, adopting the following lifestyle will help you a lot:
-  Take a healthy and high-fibre diet, with little high-sugar food
-  Do suitable exercise regularly
-  Control your body weight
-  Get adequate rest and avoid stress.

If you want to know more information, you can visit our webpage on diabetes mellitus.

(Last Updated on 13-10-2003)