The Infanta Sofia University Hospital organizes a forum with patients who are experts in diabetes treatment.

Around 200 patients and their families took part in a meeting at the Infanta Sofia University Hospital, where they shared experiences from different fields and proposed recommendations that lead to an improvement in the quality of life of people with diabetes, as is the case with diets. , exercise and even extreme sports. Caregivers and family members are a very important part of a diabetes patient and they also actively participated in this forum, sharing their experiences and treatments for the disease.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs due to the fact that the pancreas does not synthesize the amount of insulin required by the body. People with diabetes have excess glucose in their blood (hyperglycemia) because it is not distributed properly. In this sense, experts warn that if patients do not comply with appropriate treatment, tissues may be damaged and serious complications may occur in the body.

According to the 10th edition of the International Diabetes Federation’s Diabetes Atlas, an estimated 5.1 million adults in Spain are diagnosed with diabetes, representing a prevalence of 10.3%, placing our country second in Europe. . And what’s even more alarming is that our diabetes prevalence has increased by 58% since 2011. According to the same report, estimates of the actual prevalence of diabetes in Spain would be even higher, reaching 14.8%, meaning it would affect one in seven adults, of whom 30% are undiagnosed.

There are several types of diabetes: type 1 diabetes, which is most common in childhood, adolescence and the first years of adulthood, type 2 diabetes, which occurs in older age due to poor insulin production, and gestational diabetes during pregnancy. Physical activity, weight loss and developing healthy lifestyle habits have been shown to prevent the development of diabetes in people predisposed to suffer from this pathology.