Naperville, IL How Diabetes Impacts Your Mental Health and Your Spouse's By Dr Richard Hagmeyer

Diabetes Impacts Your Mental Health — and Your Spouse’s

Dr Richard Hagmeyer- Naperville Institute For NeuroMetabolic Solutions

Diabetes is not only a physical illness — it can also take a toll on your mental health. Upon first being diagnosed, it’s common to feel anger and even denial. You may wonder why this is happening to you or begin to feel very down and depressed.

Mental issues often continue beyond the initial diagnosis, as type 2 diabetes is a disease that requires daily attention and management to keep your health strong. In fact, diabetes is often said to be one of the most psychologically demanding diseases because it requires you making changes to your lifestyle on a daily basis.

These demands are not only felt by the patient, however. A new study revealed that patients’ spouses also feel distress from the disease, in ways similar to what their partners feel. Stress, frustration and sadness were common emotions in both diabetes patients and their spouses.

Interestingly, spouses’ concerns were not always felt because their partner was struggling with the disease, but rather because they had anxiety or fear over the disease’s daily management and their loved one living with it.

It’s estimated that up to one-quarter of people with diabetes also suffer from depression, a rate that’s nearly twice as high as it is among those without diabetes, so the toll this illness can take on your emotional health should not be underestimated.

The bottom line?

Diabetes is taxing for the entire family, which is why it’s so important to learn how to manage the illness and keep it squarely under your control. What you may not yet realize is that the treatment methods used by most physicians in the United States — drugs, insulin, etc. — often result in diabetics getting worse, not better, over time.

But at the Naperville Institute For NeuroMetabolic Solutions here in Naperville Illinois, we offer strategies that can help you hit the rewind button on your life. Many of our patients are able to reduce or eliminate their need for medications, lose weight, increase their energy levels and keep diabetes well under control.

(Request a Free Diabetes Recovery Report here)

In fact, many patients are able to reverse their diabetes naturally, and a number of our patients actually become non-diabetic — meaning they no longer have the disease!

To learn how you can become one of them, contact us to see if you qualify for a free diabetes assessment today. It’s the first step to not only feeling better physically but to freeing yourself, and your family, from the emotional fear and mental anxiety of living with this potentially devastating disease.

Family Relations December 2010, Volume 59, Issue 5, pages 599–610

Purdue Alumni News January 26, 2011