NOVEMBERS ARRIVAL BRINGS A NEW AWARENESS TO SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON.

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Breast Cancer is widely known as the awareness attached to the month of October, but with the arrival of November comes a new awareness to shine a spotlight on. November is Diabetes Awareness Month. And we took a deeper look into exactly what it is, how to prevent it and how to manage a diagnosis of it. We speak with Dr. Swift of Ochsner Rush Health Internal Medicine for more.

Christopher Swift, DO. of Internal Medicine at Ochsner Rush Health says that Here in the state of Mississippi Diabetes is something that really plagues our state. Our population is about 3 million, as a study in 2022 showed that there are 330,000 cases of diabetes in the state of Mississippi.

He also tells us the main symptoms of diabetes and people who are not aware they have it stem from the fact that they have elevated blood sugar levels.

Diabetes is a disease of inadequate control of blood sugar levels, and it either comes from not having enough insulin to get the blood sugar inside ourselves or the insulin we have does not work properly.

Blood sugar is needed for cells to carry out normal everyday functions needed for energy. But when the blood sugars build up outside the cell, that's what leads to diabetes.

Increased risk for diabetes, especially around here, is going to be overweight. That's going to be the biggest risk factor there. So the things that we can do to help try to prevent that would be to eat a healthy diet.

Dr. Swift states 150 minutes of exercise weekly has been shown to help prevent diabetes. This could be as little as an evening walk.

Diabetes is diagnosed with a blood test. It is simple to do. And we have lots of different treatments today that can help you try to control your blood sugar so that you can live a normal, healthy life.