What disease may be a silent killer?

Being a health advocate, I lead a pretty healthy lifestyle (or I would like to think), such as eating right (more fruits and vegetables, hardly any red meat or oily food), exercising and trying to reduce stress. Even prior to having cancer, I lead this type of lifestyle except less exercising and I was sometimes overwhelmed with stress.

Although cancer came as a shocker, and I started changing my lifestyle after to prevent a relapse, my mom throughout the entire time for the past 10 years has been living with Type 2 Diabetes. When we first found out, all of us tried to encourage her to change her habits especially eating less carbohydrates and sweet things. However, as the years went by, she exercised quite a fair bit, and stopped eating rice, but her blood sugar was still high.

Drinking green tea and eating salads became part of her diet

Despite how hard she tried, sometimes eating mostly salads, her blood sugar remained high. Many of us may not know this but diabetes is a silent killer because complications include glaucoma, nerve damage, cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure, skin complications such as fungal infections and when there’s poor control, it may lead to kidney disease (American Diabetes Association, 2016) !!! If it doesn’t happen to us even if we have diabetes, we think we are invincible BUT when all the complications start arising, there’s no stopping it and no turning back time right?

Part of the side effects is weight loss and she has lost a lot of weight since her diagnosis.

It can be difficult to completely change your lifestyle at first, but if your diabetes is poorly controlled, there are deleterious side effects as mentioned earlier. Upon much advise from my mom’s doctor, she’s on the path to controlling it properly by tracking her sugar, medication, and of course her diet. It was an uphill battle for my mom until some side effects started showing for my mom like weight loss.

For a long time, I always encourage my Mom to see a Health Care Professional to ensure proper diagnosis and to help in controlling blood sugar levels. It was during the time when she finally saw a doctor that I learnt about a new drug from a recent launch which is called xigduo™ XR. This drug basically combines dapagliflozin and Metformin XR as dual agent treatment for early glycaemic control. It is one of the 1st SGLT2 fixed dose combination (FDC) in Malaysia, delivering HbA1c reduction of 2% while addressing other cardiovascular risk factors such as blood pressure reduction and weight loss.

This is how xigduo™ XR looks like but it’s always important to remember to consult your health care practitioner before you take any medication for Type 2 Diabetes.

Citing Professor Dr. Chan Siew Pheng, a Senior Consultant Endocrinologist, “Diabetes requires a multifaceted approach in its management. This often includes lifestyle modifications such as increased physical activity and nutritious diet, in combination with oral agents to attain glycaemic control where the dosage and/or types of medication are slowly adjusted over time…” and I couldn’t agree more.

A chart by Dr.Chan showing diabetes-related deaths in the year 2013 across age and region!! These are important statistics to take note of that Diabetes is not something to take lightly of.

Official Launch of xigduo™ XR

My niece, her grand daughter that is a huge motivator for her!!

Well, if you have a parent having diabetes, or yourself, please approach it in the right manner and change your lifestyle as much as possible because having diabetes is nothing like a cold, or cough, but rather a long term illness. Every time you are about to stop exercising, or eating right, remember that this is for your health, and it allows you to lead a happier and more fulfilled life 🙂

Stay Healthy,

Mei Sze