Living well with diabetes

What is diabetes and what are the differences between type 1 and type 2? What is blood glucose and why is it important to keep it under control? What are the main risk factors, including the link with obesity? What role do stress and the environment play in the management of diabetes? How does diabetes manifest itself and how does one arrive at a diagnosis? These are the first questions 'to understand what diabetes is' to be answered with the help of clinicians and experts who were asked by Il Sole 24 Ore to provide 24 questions and answers on how best to manage this silent pandemic, which many are now calling a silent pandemic that is increasingly spreading throughout the world and in Italia, but against which prevention and correct lifestyles, combined with early diagnosis and increasingly 'friendly' therapies and technologies for people with diabetes, can make the difference.The answers have been developed in collaboration with the Italian Society of Diabetology (SID) and the Association of Diabetes Physicians (AMD) united in FeSDI - Federation of Italian Diabetes Societies, Alliance for Diabetes. Through FeSDI, AMD and SID represent Diabetology towards national and international institutions and public opinion, and collaborate in the organisation of World Diabetes Day and all related initiatives. These are authoritative voices that can help make people with diabetes more aware of how it is really possible today to live and live well with diabetes in its daily management, thanks also to the increasingly effective drugs available. A condition that, however, as the section on 'Prevention and Complications' explains, requires people with diabetes themselves to be proactive in monitoring and protecting themselves, for example against infections with vaccinations, but also by following healthy lifestyles and a proper diet that does not mean giving up eating with satisfaction. And then there are the great developments in research and technologies knocking at the door that seem to draw an ever easier and more liveable future with a completely fulfilling social life for people with diabetes.