In your best form : a series of broadcast talks for diabetics and their families (recently broadcast in the Home Service programme and published with the permission of the author and other broadcasters.).

Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: In your best form : a series of broadcast talks for diabetics and their families (recently broadcast in the Home Service programme and published with the permission of the author and other broadcasters.). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    right out into the country—lI did 4o miles last Sunday. - Doctor: What about food ? PAMELA: diet sheet tells you how. Doctor: And Jimmy? Jimmy’s been on insulin since he was 6 by the way. He’s now 17 and is another long distance cyclist. How do you feel about having diabetes, Jimmie ? JimmMIE: You don’t think anything of it—there’s nothing wrong with you, you just take your insulin every day. I detest people pitying me—neighbours who don’t understand. PAMELA: When you go out to tea and say “ No sugar, thank you,’ they say “‘Oh, we've got plenty.’ I say “ T never take it.”” They want to know why; they keep on asking and then they say “ Oh poor girl—fancy, at your age !”’ They depress me when they say that kind of thing. Jimmie: I give them a bit of my mind, but what I say is not fit for broadcasting. People mustn't go about feeling sorry for us—we're just as well as anybody else. Doctor: Perhaps you are yourself a diabetic, or perhaps you have a diabetic in your family, oramongst your relations. In any case, I hope you took in what you have just heard, and especially. the last few remarks. We asked these four people to come along for one main reason and that is to show you that properly treated diabetics should feel quite well and do almost all the things that the rest of us do. I say almost all, because it would be wrong to encourage them to pretend they have no handicap at all, and thus perhaps to do things which might lead them or other people into real and unnecessary . danger. But with proper treatment it is only a very few things that they shouldn’t do. Diabetes is an illness in which the body is unable to use sugar. Now sugar is formed in the body from what we call the carbohydrate in the food. This includes not only the sugar we eat, but also the bread, flour, potatoes and foods like that. sugar, so it accumulates in the blood. Untreated patients get rid of it. by passing enormous quantities of urine; this fluid loss makes them terribly thirsty, so that they drink enormous quantities of water to replace it. At the same time they feel ill andetired, and grow thin. Mild cases can often be shecaeanelte treated by a diet, which reduces the carbohydrate of the food to an amount which the patient can use, and inciden- tally this diet often reduces his weight. These mild cases usually occur in older loss of weight may be a good thing. But in severe cases, which have not been treated, the patient is usually already © thin and weak; a restricted diet would simply make him thinner still and would, at best, only prolong his life for a time. Severe diabetes was, in fact, a death sentence until the year.1922. In that year two Canadians, called Banting and Best, first prepared insulin, one of the three or four most dramatic medical discoveries of this century. Insulin is made by a gland called the pancreas and controls the use of sugar by the body. It has no effect when taken by mouth, but injections of insulin. will enable diabetic people to make use of sugar in the ordinary way, and so to. regain their health and energy. Diabetes, — you see, is one of the disorders due to the absence of something right—insulin —rather than to the presence of some- thing wrong. It follows that insulin does not cure diabetes, and unfortun- ately those who need it usually have to go on taking it for life. That is a very brief and siniaee explanation but it will do for the present and we shall fill in some of the gaps later. . The exact number of diabetics in this country is not known but it is said to be — between 150,000 and 200,000. Let’s say 150,000. The number is rising, mainly because with modern treatment — diabetics live much longer. Intelligent ones who are well treated can indeed expect to live as long as other people, and they can now insure their lives. It goes without saying that it is important to these 150,000 people that they should be properly treated. It is perhaps ~ equally important to their families and relations that they should be fit and able to earn their livings. And lastly,
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