Navigating Diabetes Management in Winter

It probably will, and also maybe in terms of what it is that they're eating. So I know with the winter or warmer foods, there's a natural sort of gravitation towards eating things that may be a bit more carbohydrate laden or, you know, and also I think for the cost of living we've got to be honest about the fact that maybe the least healthiest foods are the cheapest foods and that is what people can actually afford and so you know they'll be making dietary choices based on what their budget can allow for and that yes that may have an impact on their blood glucose control and you know their diabetes control overall and it depends how well they understand, you know, their diabetes and how to factor forward that, you know, in terms of their activity, what they're eating, their medication and their controls. Obviously, when they're on insulin, depending on the types of insulin that they're taking, they would be able to adjust accordingly and, you know, do the counting, whatever it is that they do. But certainly, if they don't know that, you know, we may find variations. But by and large, patients who are regularly taking their medications, I think that they seem to have a grip on things, but we tend to see the ones, certainly in my clinic particularly, when they develop complications, it's usually, you know, as an adjunct, one of the things we do notice is poor control of diabetes, but this is not poor control just now, it's over a long period of time, hence why they develop the complications. So I think it is quite multifaceted and I think for each individual person it is very individualized. Do you know what I mean? There is no one solution for every single person and as healthcare professionals we need to understand what the individual challenges are for each of our patients to know where they're coming from, where they're living, what they have access to in terms of food. Especially in this environment where we work, not all of our patients necessarily live in stable environments. So we've got some who live in homeless hospitals and some might actually be homeless and some are in care homes, some in nursing homes. So the ability to access food, those that are on their own, who may be doing things for themselves, is very variable and different and what they have access to is very different and variable so when we give advice and when we want to try and help them we've got to factor all of those into account to try and make it as easy as possible or as manageable as possible for our patients.