Websites aimed at people with diabetes

There are more and more websites ‘out there’. Desang contributor Joe Frazer, who has Type 1, has taken a look at three of them and shares his views with us.

www.active-diabetes.co.uk
Active diabetes run mountaineering weekends in conjunction with an education program to teach diabetics how to manage exercise. The educational element emphasises self-knowledge to achieve mastery of your diabetes, with the site claiming, “our aim is to bridge the information gap with practical experience”. This approach to diabetes can only be positive in my opinion, and, as long as you’re prepared for the occasional hyper or hypo, is the best way to learn how to manage your diabetes. The people at Active Diabetes have clearly accommodated their diabetes into their active lifestyles and are sharing it here with no doubt hard-won experience and advice. The site isn’t particularly sophisticated but if you’re worried about controlling your blood sugars while maintaining an active lifestyle, it is definitely worth a visit.

www.diabetorati.com
Diabetorati is a blog that’s a wealth of information about healthy living with Type 2 diabetes. The articles are clear and draw upon scientific research such as one of the latest entries, Chromium and diabetes – benefits and sources. However, the entries are really accessible – you don’t need a PhD to understand them. Set up and run by Australian Walter Adamson, who himself has Type 2, the site is as he says, “Straight talk about my holistic lifestyle approach, and research and advice from where-ever I can find it which might help me, and you”. The articles mainly focus on the benefits of exercise (both muscle-building and cardio-vascular) and the effects of various foods upon blood sugar control. There are also plenty of links to diabetes news sites, as well as to other blogs such as ‘Mind over Mellitus’, which takes a more psychological approach to diabetes. All in all, this is a site to visit to get an accessible, but scientific grounding in the health issues that surround diabetes.

www.successfuldiabetes.com
Successful diabetes is a site run by two ex-diabetes nurses, Jill Rodgers and Rosie Walker, and specialises in diabetic education. The founders have been training healthcare professionals in diabetes care for over a decade, have written three books between them (available on the site) and are Diabetes UK’s “preferred providers of skill training for their volunteers”. They offer a host of workshops for people with diabetes and those that need to know about the condition for their work, improving people’s control and understanding of diabetes. To supplement these workshops there are currently forums under construction on the site, as well as an on-line training course in diabetes self-management. In the meantime, after a simple registration process, there’s a monthly newsletter and a 100 top tips archive for successful control. It seems to me that this site offers the most established way of learning about diabetes of the three reviewed, but with over 10 years of specialist experience teaching about diabetes, that’s no bad thing.

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