The Modern Man's Guide - New Men's Health Diabetes Education Campaign

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) has launched a new men’s health education campaign to help bridge the gap and reach men with diabetes. Their goal is to provide tools and resources to take a “modern” approach to managing diabetes in every day life. A survey of 1,000 men showed that men with type 2 diabetes often feel sad or grumpy, get less enjoyment out of life, and feel like diabetes negatively impacts their sex lives. Good for ADA for bringing this stuff out of the closet.

Notably, most men were unaware that diabetes and related conditions can affect their emotional and sexual health. With symptoms such as depressed mood, erectile dysfunction and fatigue, men with low testosterone may feel too frustrated, unmotivated or unaware to discuss disease-related complications with a doctor or lover, further diminishing their ability to take a proactive approach to managing their diabetes.  Some of the new ADA resources target men who are seeking male-specific health information including practical diet and exercise tips, information on sleep apnea, and other information on physical, emotional, and sexual health.

How exactly do you bridge the gap towards men? The ADA is trying with a new “Men’s Health” page on the ADA’s Web site. (Side note – we’re excited to catch a glimpse of the makeover to www.diabetes.org, where some of the pages and content have already transferred, like Men’s Health. Excellent. Stay tuned for further thoughts!) The ADA also created “The Modern Man’s Guide to Living Well with Diabetes” handbook, which can be downloaded from the site. At first glance, it has a lot of good information for men that could help enable many to make small, daily changes. We hope lots of primary care doctors, endocrinologists, and educators hear about this page, because sometimes it’s easier to learn about this at leisure rather than in a medical appointment, especially if time is limited as it so often is in the US system (especially after talking about blood glucose and cholesterol and blood pressure…) It’s great to see this resource come alive - after all, the survey results showed 60 percent of men wanted more information about conditions related to diabetes that would help them manage better overall. We second that! We do wish they had shortened the guide a bit; 36 pages may intimidate men who already feel overworked and overwhelmed by diabetes care. It does look like a guide that can be taken page by page…

Overall, we are excited about ADA’s take-charge stance on reaching out and closing the information gap for men. We hope they continue to be proactive and help others – particularly those falling through the cracks of diabetes care (young adult and transition support anyone?? Pregnancy? Elderly?).

Comments

[シアリス]

Excellent information. This sounds exactly like what I've been looking for.

[diabetic signs]

this is great event to stop diabetes progression.....

[male enhancement products]

If i go by ADA guidelines, then im not a diabetic. Endo guidelines are less than 110 after fasteing, and less than 140 2 hrs after meal. ADA guidelines are less than 140 fasting and less than 180 after 2 hrs meal. Are the pharmaceutical cos playing with our lives just to make big bucks by having those smaller number for a diabetic. Remember, 5 years ago 212 total cholesterol was considered normal, and now its less than 160. Following are my glucose numbers. In the morning before any meal, my number is 129-133 and 2 hrs after meal , my number is anywhere from 140 -180, Whom do u belive . I know if i go to a doc he/she will go by Endo guidelines, by which i am diabetic.

[V]

An informative article on diabetes and men's health.

Thanks
Martin

[kelly]

hey Scott! wow this is intriguing, i have never heard of BGAT but I'd love to try it - I know the UVA group does so much innovative thinking. How did you hear about it? I'd love to try the online program - maybe they would let a group of people who are interested try it as a beta? I have also heard one can get rid of hypo unawareness if one has literally NO (not even one) hypoglycemia experience (mild, moderate, or severe) for three weeks. Not sure if you have ever heard that - I have never managed to do that. About our post, we think there is NO shortage of things the diabetes community (such as it is) needs and it seems to us like the leadership at ADA has been really impressive and really listening of late. About the blog, by the way, we weren't trying to call out every group that's being left behind, because goodness knows there are too many, but were just trying to think of some groups that came to mind. This blog also reminds me of the interview we did last month with the AADE Educator of the Year for 2009, Janis Roszler - she is all about bringing all the problems out of the closet, which we think is cool. http://www.closeconcerns.com/interview-janis-roszler-full.php

[Scott]

You indicate that you hope the ADA helps others – particularly those falling through the cracks of diabetes care, although interestingly, you omit one group which I would argue needs help, too ... the type 1 population who suffers from hypoglycemia unawareness. In my experience, too many CDE's recite factually incorrect information (namely data that has since been proven incorrect) and tend to "blame" the patient for failure to recognize non-existent warning symptoms which may or may not return when avoiding hypos for some period of time.

I recently had an interesting conversation with Linda Gonder-Frederick of the University of Virginia Health System. As you may know, she (along with colleague Daniel Cox) developed Blood Glucose Awareness Training (BGAT) which you may also know was featured in the August 2008 edition of Diabetes Care indicating that the online version of the program was a success.

When I asked Linda about that particular program, she said they were in the final stages of testing it and will be presenting our results at this year's ADA meeting. Although they have a website where people can put their names if they are interested in being notified as soon as it is 'up and running', it has taken us a long time and they are facing some technical issues which the ADA SHOULD be helping out with.

She said that she and Daniel Cox were meeting with the ADA -- mostly looking for assistance for largely technical issues, such as hosting the application itself and to ensure they had sufficient bandwidth, etc. I don't know what the outcome of their meeting was, but I would dare suggest that if the ADA cannot pony up some assistance and cash for that, then their effort for type 2 men should be considered a joke, as this is a far more serious health issue impacting the type 1 community, and the ADA has a decidedly poor track record of addressing issues for this segment of the diabetes community. Maybe the influence of John Buse is finally permeating? One can always hope that this is a sign of long-overdue changes at what is arguably grown to be a bureaucracy that is terribly inefficient and has a limited record of success on a host of different issues.