Key points from today’s guests:

Charlotte Burns, PA-C, physician assistant, Endocrinology, The University of Kansas Health System; has Type 1 diabetes

• More than 11 percent of the American population has diabetes and it can increase your risk of heart disease.
• The American Diabetes Association says adults with diabetes are twice as likely to have a heart attack or a stroke compared to people without diabetes.
• Charlotte was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 19 years old.
• She says the signs were there before diagnosis -- unexplained weight loss, having to use the restroom constantly, and always being thirsty -- but she and her parents didn't know enough about the disease to know the signs.
• She had no family history of diabetes.
• The diagnosis changed what she chose to study in school, where she has now become a physician assistant working in the same Cray Diabetes Center where she was first diagnosed.
• Her own experience helps other patients who are being treated for diabetes.

Dr. Dan Tilden, endocrinologist, The University of Kansas Health System

• The problem with everyone with diabetes is that they don't have enough insulin.
• The difference between Type 1 and Type 2 is really how they get there. The problem with Type 1 is that it is an autoimmune condition where your body is actually destroying the insulin producing cells in the pancreas.
• In Type 2 diabetes, the problem is not that you don't make enough insulin, but it's that the pancreas can't keep up, so people have increasing needs for insulin and that's what we call insulin resistance.
• Whenever we lower blood sugars as we control diabetes, we see improvements in cardiovascular outcomes like heart attacks and strokes. Those get better as we control glucose.
• It's just so important for people not just to think about diabetes as something that we treat with medications, but something that really is so interlinked with lifestyle like food and exercise. It really is something that challenges us from a more holistic point of view.

Dr. Shannon Hoos-Thompson, cardiologist, The University of Kansas Health System

• With diabetes, the efficiency of the heart becomes less and it can lead to heart failure.
• More importantly, diabetes causes dysregulation of blood vessels, so the vessel itself doesn't know if it should constrict versus expand, and then it crystallizes and stiffens, and so it can't function.
• Then the blood vessels themselves become dysfunctional and the heart then becomes dysregulated and you end up with mismatched blood supply. That's where you end up with heart dysfunction.
• For diabetes patients, taking care of their health is an everyday process and even if you have a bad day, get back on your feet and take care of it the next day.
• If you don't want to have a heart attack or if you're afraid of heart failure, those things really do drive your decision making to manage your diabetes -- your diet and your exercise and how you take care of yourself day in and day out.
• If you're not doing those things reasonably well, it could impact your heart health.

Friday, August 30 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. COVID numbers are up, along with hospitalizations. Just as a new vaccine comes out. Dr. Stites leads a panel of other chief medical officers from area hospitals to hear what’s happening in our region, and to look ahead at the fall.

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