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How To Tell If You Have Diabetes
Actress Sue Cleaver, aka Coronation Street's Eileen Grimshaw, suffers from diabetes. She wants people to get tested for the condition.
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Step 1:
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The Statistic
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1.8 million people in the UK suffer from diabetes and another three quarters have the condition but are totally unaware of it.
Now, if diabetes does go untreated, it can lead also to problems with your heart, your kidney, your eyesight, and your nerves.
One person who knows from firsthand experience that diabetes can affect anyone is the actress Sue Cleaver. She played Eileen Grimshaw on Coronation Street.
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Step 2:
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Sue Cleaver
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Sue found out that she had diabetes during pregnancy. Eleven years ago, in one of her ante-natal regular test that you have. The urine testshows that I had it then. So she was lucky that was caught when it started. Unfortunately with most people with gestational diabetes it goes away. With hers it didn’t, so she's been taking insulin now for the last seven years. It was scary when she got told, as you don’t understand it. All she could think about was if the baby was going to be alright. They’d reassured her within a couple of hours that she was fine. And she realized that it was a good thing that she’d found out so early.
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Step 3:
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Where To Get Tested
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Now, Sue was rather fortunate in the way that she found out. But thankfully the diagnosis is a lot more easier. You can now be screened for diabetes while doing your weekly shop. That service is available at Tesco Pharmacy.
We’ve tried and told the people the ones doing the test are people who have special training. There will also be somebody from the pharmacy team and we’ll do it in a private consultation area and no worries about privacy or anything like that.
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Step 4:
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The Test Itself
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What happens is that you’ll go to the pharmacy and you’ll be given a form to fill it out. And it’s just a short questionnaire. There’s about a dozen questions on there. It’s about the symptoms of diabetes and also the risk factors. Fill one of those up and just turn in the questions and you’re going in to a consultation room. And have a quick blood test. Just finger- prick blood test, that’s not too painful. And then, at the end of that, we’ll be able to tell you what your blood sugars are and what it means for you. And for whether you’re risk for diabetes and when you need to go see your doctor.
We can’t diagnose diabetes from one single test. That’ll involved dozen of tests that will be done through your doctor. What we can do is help you identify to discuss further and have more investigations.
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Step 5:
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The Conclusion
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This test are very important so the 750 thousand people walking around not realizing they have diabetes. The longer it goes undiagnosed, the more chance you have of getting serious complications. Which could mean probably your kidneys, your eyes, your nerves, your heart. It just causes metabolic chaos.
Of course, some people may be worried about the implications of finding out you have diabetes, but not knowing is far more serious. And so it shows on our TV screens throughout the week, you can have a normal life.
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