I see a lot of people saying they can’t find the motivation to make the efforts fighting their diabetes would require.
I think part of it is that the consequences of diabetes are often disconnected from the disease, both in effect and in time. It’s for example not entirely obvious that a headache is due to high blood glucose. Or that the destruction of the pancreas’ Beta cells is due to diet 20 years earlier. When you crush your finger with a hammer, the cause and effect are obvious, and you make sure to avoid it next time. Not so much with diabetes, and that’s how people rationalise not doing much.
But here is what made me instantly want to fight diabetes the minute I was diagnosed: the life expectancy of T2 diabetics is up to 10 years shorter than the rest of the population, according to a Diabetes UK survey. Not only that, but on the way, they’ll have anything from headaches to heart failure, via organ damage and amputations. So even for those who just make it, they aren’t good years.
Let’s illustrate that: the current life expectancy in the UK of adults born the same year I was is 72 years. A 10 years reduction means you won’t make it to retirement (66 years old at the moment). In fact you’ll miss retirement by a good number of years. You won’t enjoy not having to work every day, you won’t enjoy your grandchildren, you’ve waisted a pile of money saving for retirement for nothing.
So once diagnosed, options are:
- Do nothing and live a shorter and worse life than the average population.
- Tackle diabetes, do whatever needs to be done, try to get into remission as fast as possible, and aim to live a good life that isn’t shortened by the disease.
Is there anything else to be said to be motivated?
