Apollo Sugar has launched the free Ramadan Diabetes Education Programme in Bangalore. This programme included a series of activities like free diabetes screening, diabetes education sessions, Ramadan and diet related patient education.

The workshop was conducted with the agenda to educate people and create awareness to help achieve and maintain good metabolism and blood sugar levels thereby preventing the risk of hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) and dehydration.

The workshop included extensive pre-Ramadan activities in four major steps: screening, education on diet and physical activity, diabetic monitoring and medication. “The initial step was the screening of patients, wherein about 300 patients were tested, out of which 150 were found to have good diabetic control while the remaining were diagnosed with extremely poor control of the disease.”, said Dr. Raja Selvarajan, consultant, internal medicine and diabetologist at Apollo Sugar Clinics.

One of the key endeavours of the workshop was to inform diabetic patients regarding the effects of extreme fasting and educate them on effective diet plans and physical activities to keep in mind during the festive season. Furthermore the workshop stressed on blood sugar monitoring and also adjusted medication according to the requirement of the patient.

“During Ramadan a different criterion of medication is followed wherein the patient consumes medication only once or twice a day. This pattern will be optimized and changed post Ramadan after another round of investigations”, added Dr Raja highlighting the importance of consuming starchy foods and long acting medication during this type of continuous fasting.

Diabetes management is of vital importance and extreme fasting may cause complications in diabetic patients. Complications such as impaired vision, kidney and heart diseases and aggravated blood pressure could occur in patients.