Summer Concerns for Diabetes Patients

Okay, so Fatima, we're heading into summer, what things are you looking forward to and what you're not looking forward to and what do your patients not look forward to and why? So on a personal level I'm certainly looking forward to the longer days, warmer weather, I think blue skies and nice gardens. Love the flowers. From my patients' perspectives, I think a lot of our patients do enjoy the summer. They like the fact that there's more warmth, but I think from a diabetes perspective, a lot of patients complain about the fact that they may not necessarily always be able to maintain good or optimal blood glucose levels and and that they might struggle a little bit more with hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia depending on what their control is like and also what they may be eating or drinking. From particularly a food perspective, I think with the hot weather, we get lots of people concerned about the fact that they can't keep their feet cool. Temperature regulation is quite a problem because with patients with neuropathy, they may not necessarily be able to regulate temperature the way we are and they might be feeling hot all over and tend to maybe wear shoes that are open, walk excessively long distances without realizing that they might be causing problems. They may sit in the sun not realizing that they could develop blisters or sunburn as a result of sitting in the sun. Some patients go on holiday and will access beaches or swimming pools and not wear anything on their feet and may develop a problem as a result of that. there's certainly an increase in the number of patients who present with fungal infections of the skin, especially between the toes and on the bottom of their feet. And so besides having the usual increase in the number of wounds and blisters that we see and also in terms of the number of infections and how rapid or raging the infections are, we do see other health or skin conditions that may manifest as a result of the summer. So from a healthcare perspective, obviously I'm not, it's quite a challenge to have to deal with these and also to ensure that the patients are actually kept safe and that they understand and realize where they may need to seek help and also how quickly they need to seek help. It's often that when patients are abroad on summer holidays, they may fail to access healthcare when they develop a foot problem for various reasons, they may not be aware of it, they may not be able to access the healthcare easily, they may not know how to access healthcare and so they tend to wait until they come back to their local area and sometimes that may actually be a little bit too late.