Dr. Ahmad Shahzad
Founder | Lyallpur Diabetes Foundation
Consultant Diabetologist | Educator | Advocate for Preventive Care
Treatment of diabetes is not only a matter of drugs and changing lifestyle, but also an emotional and social support. Presence of family, friends or support groups can make a great difference in the way people handle daily difficulties. Social support has been shown to promote better emotional health, treatment adherence, and reduce stress, all of which led to better health outcomes and quality of life.
Understanding Social Support in Diabetes Management
Social support also has a profound effect, enhancing self-efficacy, emotional distress, and treatment and lifestyle change compliance, and ultimately improving glycemic control and quality of life. Family, friends, and health providers can offer emotional, informational, material support, which can shape coping strategies and offer practical support with daily activities, such as medication, diet, and exercise.
Types of social support
Various sources of support such as family, friends, peers, and health providers assist diabetes patients in various ways. Key categories include:
- Emotional support: Gives comfort, care, empathy, and feeling of vagueness and understanding. This may be particularly useful in addressing the psychological load and suffering from living with a chronic illness.
- Informational support: Involves providing advice, guidance, and information regarding treatment, management strategies and complications. This aids patients and their families to know about the condition and make informed choices.
- Tangible/Instrumental support: Provides tangible, practical assistance, including financial support, assistance in daily activities, or food preparation and appointments.
- Appraisal support: Gives positive feedback, confirmation to support positive health behaviors and beliefs in the patient.
- Peer support: Offered by fellow diabetics, this provides a different outlook of life and emotional support. Peer support groups may enhance motivation, normalization of experience and self-management skills.
Impact on diabetes management
Research has repeatedly indicated that proper social support will result in better health among diabetics:
- Improved self-care: Supported patients tend to be more compliant with self-management, which includes measuring blood glucose, eating, and exercise.
- Better glycemic control: The social support is associated with a reduction in HbA1c levels, meaning better long-term glycemic control. This is usually facilitated by better self-efficacy and emotional distress.
- Improved mental health: Higher social support implies less depression, anxiety and distress due to diabetes. This emotional stability aids in the fighting against feeling overwhelmed or upset by the needs of the condition.
- Higher self-efficacy: A social network can give a person a sense of confidence in his or her capability to do healthy self-care things so that he or she can manage relatively better.
Practical Support in Daily Diabetes Care
Practical diabetes support is direct, physical interventions that assist in the daily management of diabetes. Practical support, unlike emotional support, is more focused on tasks that may be overwhelming, stressful, or hard to handle by themselves. This can greatly enhance the physical health of a person and the pressure of self-care.
Assisting with nutrition and meals
- Healthy meal planning: Volunteer to assist in planning weekly meals according to dietary recommendations suitable to diabetes, possibly balancing carbohydrates, proteins and fats.
- Cooking and preparing meals: Healthily preparing meals. This will turn the work into teamwork and not an isolating task.
- Grocery shopping: Shop with or on behalf of the person, assisting in choosing healthy food and reading food labels to check on salt, sugar and fat levels.
- Engaging the entire family: Have changes in a family-wide activity. Having meals that are friendly to diabetes can be helpful and help the person with diabetes to be consistent.
Supporting physical activity
- Taking exercise breaks: Make physical activity a family activity by walking together, taking a fitness class, or trying a new sport.
- Enjoyable activities: Assist the person to find things they enjoy doing, like gardening, swimming, or dancing to make physical exercise enjoyable and sustainable.
Helping with medical care
- Medication management: In people who require reminders or struggle with medication taking, such practical assistance may involve the arrangement of pill boxes or minor prompts to adhere to prescriptions properly.
- Supply organization: Help gather, arrange and maintain a stock of required supplies, including blood glucose testing strips, lancets, and other supplies.
- Going to the appointments: Volunteer to take your loved one to doctor check-ups and eye check-ups. This will offer moral support and remind you of important medical information and its comprehension.
- Record keeping: Assist with monitoring of blood sugar levels, medications and symptoms, in case requested. This fact is priceless when visiting a doctor.
Responding to emergencies
- Identifying symptoms: Be able to identify the symptoms of low (hypoglycemia) and high (hyperglycemia) blood sugar. Hypoglycemia may be accompanied by symptoms such as shakiness, confusion and irritability.
- Emergency preparedness: Have sugary food and glucose pills ready to resolve hypoglycemia. Know how to seek help in case of an emergency that includes calling emergency services in case someone falls unconscious.
- Technological support: Support or check-in on technology, e.g. continuous glucose monitor (CGMs) that can alert when blood sugar is too low.
Assisting with general tasks
- Foot care: Assistance with foot examination daily: Nerve damage and deficient circulation in the feet are typical diabetes complications. This includes searching for blisters, sores or cuts that might not be easily felt.
- Lessening stress: Volunteer to perform other chores or errands to relieve the mental burden. Stress has a bad effect on the blood sugar levels and creating a person with lesser burden is quite useful.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, the benefits of social support for diabetes management are profound, helping individuals stay motivated, reduce stress, and maintain healthier routines. By connecting with other relatives, friends, medical professionals, or community organizations, robust support networks allow coping with diabetes to be less cumbersome and more accessible. Forming these relationships does not only enhance physical health but also emotional strength, which provides improved outcomes in the long term.
FAQs
Why social support is important in diabetes care?
These studies provide evidence that psychological resilience of diabetic adults can be boosted by enhanced social support. Based on the current research results, such measures can be particularly useful in patients with diabetes distress.
What is the role of a social worker in diabetes management?
Diabetes Social Workers are part of the treatment team and assist the family to adapt to living with diabetes. In the case of a child with type 1 diabetes, periods of both parental and child distress and difficulty are normal. The Social Workers comprehend these emotions and happenings and can assist.
How can you support a person to manage their diabetes?
Allow them time in the day schedule to cope with diabetes-check blood sugar, make healthy food, take a walk.
What is the main goal of diabetes management?
Thus, the primary objective of diabetes care is to maintain normal blood glucose levels or a target range as much as possible.