Patient's question:
Diabetes for nearly 20 years, now undergoing home peritoneal dialysis. Vision is poor, one eye has had a lens replacement, while the other eye has not been replaced and vision is unclear. Thrombosis has caused paralysis on one side of the body, one foot is ulcerated, and the pain is unbearable. Urgent inquiry: how to treat or alleviate the pain.Doctor's answer:
The treatment of diabetes is a comprehensive approach, and dietary control, exercise, and medication are all essential. Only with the combination of dietary control and exercise can medication achieve good blood sugar-lowering effects. Otherwise, even the best medication may be ineffective. Some patients are unaware of this and believe that after starting medication, they can eat more without consequence, attempting to compensate for overeating by increasing medication dosage. This is very unwise. The result of such actions is detrimental to blood sugar control, can easily lead to weight gain, worsen insulin resistance, and also increase the burden on the pancreas, accelerating the failure of β-cell function.Recommendation: Whether it's Western medicine or traditional Chinese medicine, neither has currently found a cure for diabetes. The main reason may be that type 2 diabetes is a multifactorial disease caused by the interaction and joint participation of multiple genetic and environmental factors. In terms of treating a single aspect, Western medicine is significantly more effective than traditional Chinese medicine. However, when it comes to addressing complex diseases involving multiple contributing factors, objectively speaking, traditional Chinese medicine does play a certain role in the prevention and treatment of chronic complications of diabetes. However, in terms of blood sugar control, the effect of traditional Chinese medicine is far inferior to that of Western medicine (I have seen cases where blood sugar was well-controlled solely through the use of traditional Chinese medicine).