Everyone living with T1D knows the kind of teeth-gritting frustration that comes when people don’t understand the difference between T1D and type 2 diabetes.
Last week, the Bay Area found itself in an uproar after prominent radio and TV stations ran a story asserting that high sugar diets bring on diabetes.
Nowhere was there distinction between types 1 and 2.
Nowhere was there mention of the fact that T1D’s sudden and unexpected and unAVOIDABLE onset is brought on by dying beta cells in the pancreas.
What was never mentioned was that:
T1D has nothing to do with diet.
T1D has nothing to do with lifestyle.
T1D cannot be controlled by healthy choices in nutrition and exercise.
T1D should not be called “juvenile diabetes” because half of the 30,000 annual diagnoses in the U.S. are made in people over 18 and 85% of people living with the disease are adults.
What was heard among the many comments on the many blog posts last week was a woman wishing that the two diseases could have different names.
They can! They already do!
Kind of.
T1D.
It’s as simple as that. And as complicated as undergoing a major shift in your self-designation if you’re someone who isn’t used to the term.
It’s as simple–and as complicated–as saying, “She has T1D,” not “she’s diabetic.” Or “his son’s got T1D” not “his son has diabetes.”
Sure you’ll have to take a second to explain what T1D stands for.
But while you’re at it, you can explain that this is an autoimmune disease, that there is no cure, that it has reached epidemic proportions and we don’t know why.
For anyone who’s been frustrated when someone hands you a recipe from a “diabetic” cookbook or when someone can’t believe your son has the disease “even though he’s so fit,” or when someone says his aunt is overweight and diabetic and had to have a few toes amputated but that she had a gastric bypassed and is now “cured”. . .
. . . try saying it: T1D.
