I don’t have diabetes. I will not talk about all those things because, no matter how knowledgable and how accustomed to it I become, I can’t experience the repercussions it has on one’s body and mind. What I can talk about is how ill-informed we are. Because I was (and sometimes still am). For many years, I only had come accross it once, in the form of my grandmother using sweetener. I remember being immensely curious about this strange and endearing substance. But never to the point that I would ask the right questions, become sufficiently informed about what actually was behind this special treatment. This was true then, and could still be true now.

It is hard to believe how a single encounter can change your perception about something drastically. How it can shatter pre-conceived ideas you have carried with your whole existence, whether due to ignorance or simply because the issue seemed trivial and remote from your own little world. I met someone who has diabetes and that person is now a big part of my life. I witness first-hand the reality of it, the influence it has on things that are insignificant to us but can carry a lot of weight for her. She is not a senior, nor someone who had an unhealthy lifestyle. Yet, it fell on her suddenly, heavily, and unannounced.

I changed. I learned a lot. I am still far from fully understanding how it works and the implications it can have. But it made me realise how oblivious I was about something that influences so many people’s lives.

If it was only a few sheltered people (including me) who lacked awareness about diabetes the consequences would be less severe. After all, it doesn’t hurt anyone if some fool thinks that diabetics inject insulin when their blood sugar drops (which is highly dangerous!), or that surely the only thing they can’t eat is sweets, right? Except that it does. Because these misconceptions are shared by many. And they can not only lead to catastrophic consequences in a critical situation, but also to people to dismiss the thoughts of diabetes from their daily lives. And why wouldn’t we, as long as we don’t suffer from it? Expect that you might do.

This ignorance towards impacts people in a very different way. Whereas type I cannot be prevented, a lack of consciousness and knowledge stops people who are likely to develop type II diabetes from taking measures to prevent the development of the condition. Research1 revealed that more than half of the public is unaware that it may be preventable, and that just under half is unaware of the steps that can be taken to prevent or delay its development. With 9% of the world adult population being affected by it2, it is something that we urgently need to address.

Furthermore, people suffering from type I diabetes are not exempt form misconceptions. A deep rooted fallacy hinders them form recognising their symptoms. It is indeed common knowledge that type I diabetes has its onset in childhood. You definitely can’t get it once you are an adult, right? Wrong! This misunderstanding is potentially life-threatening because people don’t read the signs, and this leads to dangerously late diagnoses that are at best terribly stressful, at worst fatal. This danger would be avoidable, if instead of thinking that type I diabetes was a child’s disease we actually knew that it could start at any point in your life.

I want to stress that a lot of effort is being made successfully by charities, government bodies, or the NHS, to educate and support people who already suffer from diabetes. But as long as we, the public, stay for the most part naive and clueless about the matter, it will remain under-addressed.