Diabetics connect, share on Web site

Diabetes causes more deaths each year in America than breast cancer and AIDS combined. To call attention to this deadly plight, the 19th annual World Diabetes Day is Saturday, Nov. 14.

An estimated 23.6 million children and adults in the U.S., or 7.8 percent of the population, have diabetes. Another 57 million have pre-diabetic conditions.

Utah has an estimated 124,000 diabetics (4.7 percent of the population), but there are believed to be another 45,000 Utahns whose diabetes has not yet been detected.

The Beehive State is at the forefront in helping Americans and even foreigners cope with this serious disease.

A Utah-based Web site, www.diabeticconnect.com, now has more than 65,000 registered members and more than a million unique monthly visitors, making it the largest site of its kind.

"Being the largest means that we have created more connections and more opportunities for diabetics of all types — type 1, type 2, LADA and more — to find information and support to help them live healthier lives," said Stead Burwell, chief executive officer of Alliance Health Networks, creator of diabeticconnect.com.

Alliance Health, a Salt Lake company that specializes in creating social health networks, began marketing the site to diabetics across the country in April.

The site is designed for individuals with diabetes, their family members, loved ones, friends and health-care professionals and providers.

"People are coming together at diabeticconnect.com to learn, support and teach one another," Burwell said. "It's crowd-sourcing in real life, where the sum of the knowledge and experience of all of the Diabetic Connect members is far, far greater than their individual knowledge and experience."

The site's members can create their own profile where they control the information they choose to make public or keep private.

And like other social networking sites, they can become friends with other members and share news and information.

The Web site also features discussion boards, a diabetes news and aggregator service, an event calendar, videos, book club and even a recipe section.

The site also features a personal touch. Each new member is also automatically befriended by a "patient advocate" (Amy Tenderich, a type 1 diabetic, author and blogger) and a "caregiver advocate" (John Crowley, father of a son with juvenile diabetes).

"Although all the signs were there — thirsty all the time, sporadically blurry vision, rapid weight loss — I felt totally blindsided by my diagnosis with type 1 diabetes just after the birth of our third daughter," Tenderich said. "I now live with the finger pricks, the insulin injections, the continual worry about food and exercise, but I've learned to manage a balanced and happy life.

"Staying on top of diabetes takes work; that's why I've always looked for ways to connect with other diabetics: to learn from them and their families and caregivers, to find and share the best information with them."

More information on diabetes is also available at health.utah.gov/diabetes, www.worlddiabetesday.org or www.diabetes.org.

e-mail: lynn@desnews.com