Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

On 20 October, I am running the Birmingham Great Run, a half marathon to raise money for Diabetes UK.

But why?

The reason is that is that it is a cause close to my heart. Very close. In fact diabetic blood is, as you are reading, pumping through my heart, coursing through my veins.

People with diabetes regularly have too much or too little sugar in their bodies. You can detect it in the blood and also in the urine.

Too much sugar damages sensitive bits of your body, like your eyes and nerve endings. In extreme cases, it can lead to blindness and amputations and accelerate the effects of other severe medical conditions such as heart disease that affect quality of life and longevity.

 

Too little sugar means you don’t have enough energy, leading to loss of concentration, tiredness or fainting. 

For most healthy people,  it is good hardworking insulin that keeps the sugar you eat or drink under control. It stops the sugar from overloading your body just after you’ve eaten and keeps it under control, discharging it gradually to last you until mealtimes and avoiding hypo and hyper episodes where are sugar levels are dangerously low or high.

I have Type 2 diabetes, which means that the insulin in my body is crap – either hardly there at all, or not working very well. We need to take tablets and keep to strict diets and heath regimes to keep healthy. People with Type 1 diabetes have no insulin at all and need to inject it directly two or three times daily. We are all much more susceptible to other diseases.

But I didn’t always have diabetes. In the year 2000, I changed my mortgage provider, saving about £5000 in repayments in fact. As part of the deal, I had to take out new life insurance and so had to undergo a full medical at my GP’s. So I was weighed, prodded and poked. Then the nurse handed me a small flask and asked me to leave a sample. I said “You’re taking the piss”. Yes she replied and stuck a test stick into it. And that was it, the results were in.

Diabetes UK raises money to lead clinical research and to educate current and potential sufferers and to advocate on behalf of diabetics. I was lucky that I found out about my condition early before any serious damage was done. But they say for every diagnosed diabetic, there are many others – maybe your friends and family – who are not yet diagnosed.

So I am running on 20 October to help Diabetes UK make more people aware of the condition and it’s symptoms so that they can find out what they need to do to avoid the worst. On average, currently only 75 per cent of the expected cases of diabetes are detected. By the time they are diagnosed 50 per cent of people with Type 2 diabetes show signs of severe complications.

 

So please donate via my JustGiving page or via text, but also take the time to find out a little more about diabetes

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for the charity.