About Diabetes
Learning to live with a chronic disease
Ellis Diabetes Care helps individuals with diabetes improve their quality of life by providing education to patients and their families.
What is Diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic disease that develops when the body doesn't make enough insulin, or doesn't use insulin properly. Insulin helps glucose, a form of sugar manufactured by the body from food, enter cells and make the energy the body needs. A person with diabetes must control the amount of glucose in the blood to avoid medical complications, such as loss of vision, heart attack, amputation or kidney disease.
Awareness and Symptoms
An estimated 30 million Americans have diabetes; however, approximately 6 million of these people don't even know it. In addition, it is estimated that over 84 million Americans have "pre-diabetes" and most will develop diabetes within 10 years. Ellis Diabetes Care strives to increase awareness of the symptoms of diabetes because too often they are overlooked.
Since early detection and treatment of diabetes are the keys to reducing your chances of developing serious medical complications, it's important to know the following symptoms of diabetes:
- Frequent urination
- Excessive thirst
- Extreme hunger
- Unusual weight loss
- Increased fatigue
- Irritability
- Blurry vision
If you have one or more of these symptoms, the American Diabetes Association recommends that you make an appointment with your doctor as soon as possible.
How can we help?
The first step in prevention and treatment of diabetes is education. What you don't know about diabetes can hurt you. Ellis Diabetes Care offers many programs and services for people with diabetes and for those people at risk for diabetes. Ellis is staffed with Certified Diabetes Educators that will work with you on an individual basis to develop a self-management plan designed to meet your needs.
Contact Us
For more information about the programs or to speak with one of our educators, please call Ellis Diabetes Care at 518.347.5421.