Autumn Adjustments and Optimism

Thank you. And lastly, moving on to the autumn questions. So do the autumn months bring any specific challenges for patients with diabetes? And how would you advise they manage these? So I think in the autumn, people are really getting ready for the winter. The summer holidays are over, some people feel a bit of a dip in their mood, the days are getting shorter, it's getting colder, and it's another time for encouraging people to be optimistic and helping them to once again look at different ways in which they can exercise different resources or using the same resources that they have done through the rest of the year for support and information, but encouraging and reminding them that this is just another time of year. And again, people are also looking forward to Christmas, which we know brings its own stresses and strains, as well as the joy of the festivities and celebrations. patients and the diet that they're worried they're going to be needing to control. So allowing people to not be so rigid with goal setting at this time of year. And are there any things that you do differently to support patients with diabetes during the autumn months and going into winter? I think it's very much responding to patients' needs. On the whole, the challenges are very much the same as in the rest of the year. In the autumn, I think it's much more when we get to the depths of the winter that it's more difficult. And do your patients make any particular preparations going into going into the winter months to protect their health. Can you name any examples you may have seen? The whole point about making sure they have adequate medication, have prepared themselves in terms of warmth is very important that they are maintaining communication with the friends and family that they have or other members of the community, directing patients to community resources like there are park runs, there are park walks, there are walking groups and joining these groups. There are also groups that support each other getting together and talking both online and face to face. They support each other with talking, with activities such as dancing, preparing food for each other, and I think we need more of this. It's been very, very helpful for people who have found these groups in Hamsley and Fulham. And in your view, how could a health-shared community platform better support poor diabetes during the autumn and winter months? Oh I think being able to share resources or having a means of patients being able to look at look at the resource that a platform like this could offer to see for themselves where the resources are is you know where these groups are or how they can find for for example, gyms that are perhaps subsidised, because a lot of people in the autumn and winter unable to exercise outdoors also find it quite expensive to go to gyms or find swimming pools that they can afford. And I think that a platform like healthshared.com could very much help with that. Thank you. Lastly, do you have any words of encouragement or a message of motivation for patients with diabetes going through the autumn and winter months? You know, I've often heard patients say that being given the diagnosis of diabetes was the turning point in their lives and in a way it gave them the push they needed to change their lifestyle and live a healthy life and I often talk to patients about the fact that although we keep saying that diabetes is a lifetime condition, a long-term condition, many many many people can take that condition into remission.