Learning to Live With Diabetes

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A diabetic clinic was set up in 1960 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. We were, as conventions go, obliged to prepare a booklet for the diabetics providing them some facts on the disease and general principles involved in the care of this malady. Basically, we were reluctant to issue a general information pamphlet of the type, assuming that individual contact of the patient with the physician was most important and that many of the guidelines inherent therein being followed must be based on confidence established with the patient and the physician.

Secondly, there has always been a great degree of pragmatism in the care of diabetic patients. The idealist approach in sustaining norm glycaemia has been full of r many don'ts in the normal lifestyles. Doctors, exhibiting authority and hinting at dire consequences of diabetes, have often refused to accept patients who are known to have sought care in another clinic or with another physician. Text of instructions like commandments of religious puritanism, strict rituality and hard-line discipline have been overbearing in many diabetic clinics.

Again, authentic information on the subject regarding diet, use of oral hypoglycaemic agents or insulin, has been available from Western text-books, but its application to an Indian diabetic with different diet pattern and social, ecological surroundings does not seem logical.

Fourthly, there has been a spate of indigenous devices for cure of a diabetic including mantras, natural living foods, yoga and all sorts of plant seeds and herbs and bhasmas. The modern medical practitioners have had no clue as to the rationale of such claims, nor could they scientifically corroborate validity of the beneficial effects of such methods of alleviating diabetes.