TREATMENT IN CASES OF MILD DIABETES
There are instances of patients with diabetes who have lived for twenty years or more without any effort at treatment. This consoling thought must not make unwary the patient with a moderately severe or severe form of the disease. It is safer to overrate the seriousness of the condition than to commit an irreparable blunder and neglect the careful management of a serious condition. Children and young adults, for instance, may seem well during the first year after the appearance of sugar, but with few exceptions they develop the severest form of the disease later unless they are very carefully treated from the first.
A good many older persons may be treated satisfactorily with much less dietary restriction than is necessary in the severe cases. When this is possible, insulin is not needed and should not be used, or, in other words, if a condition is serious enough to require insulin, it is serious enough to require an accurately weighed diet. Occasionally patients have so little intelligence that it is hopeless to expect them to carry on the weighed diet intheir homes. For such, and also for patients with very mild diabetes, the following general advice is usually beneficial:
If sugar appears in the urine, bread should be omitted. If it persists after thus reducing the carbohydrate intake, the condition of the patient is severe enough to warrant instituting the more accurate management discussed herein.