Chapter Three: Dmitry Semenovich Doubts
Diabetes treatment (the Buteyko method or other) seriously interested Dmitry Semenovich. He read that the Committee of Experts on Diabetes (in 1981) noted in a report that diabetes leads to a 2–3 times increase in mortality. "And why does this happen?" Dmitry Semenovich asked himself a serious question. It is accompanied by a 2–3 times increase in the frequency of heart disease and strokes. Well, I never… Diabetes itself is one grief. And here also heart racing will go, and a stroke traps… Further – more. Diabetes approaches not only a stroke. It turned out that blindness among diabetes patients occurs ten times more often than among the general population. Dmitry Semenovich had something to grab his head over. He never thought he would find out such terrible data about diabetes. Ten times more blind…
And on this slippery path is already his Yuri. Pretty affairs… But the matter was not limited to blindness alone. Gangrene and amputation of extremities, according to what is printed in the book, occur among diabetes patients twenty times more often than among the general population!!!
Yes. Treatment of diabetes by the Buteyko method could save these unfortunate feet from cutting and arms… Here Yuri's dad suddenly remembered an article from a magazine that told about the sufferings of diabetes patients in the island state of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. When Dmitry Semenovich first read this article, he simply thumbed through it. As some southern exotic. He didn't pay special attention to the word diabetes then. Yuri was young enough and healthy in those years. Now Yuri's dad has returned to that journal file and found this place.
The article wrote that the inhabitants of Tonga eat plenty. They do no exercise. They are terribly obese. They catch diabetes and lose their hands and legs… Yuri's father seriously doubted the persisting danger of diabetes that our present physicians acknowledge. All of them are aware of its terrible consequences… He turned the pages of the article from that time. And found in it lines that directly concerned diabetes. It was written there that one of the most terrible disasters of the island state Tonga is diabetes. That it most often strikes overweight people after forty years. It became clear that in those suffering from this disease, the pancreas does not produce enough insulin to cope with the excess glucose in the body. The disease can cause various disorders.
Here is where treatment of diabetes by the Buteyko method was useful! From the article, Dmitry Semenovich learned that diabetes can cause атеросклероз with its narrowing of blood vessels, that diabetes disrupts blood circulation… Yuri's dad was particularly struck by the following fragment from the article, which said that in the diabetic clinic of Nukualofa, several толстых men and women with sad expressions sit on a bench waiting for test results. In a chamber behind a nearby door, other patients rest on beds. Their legs are covered with ulcers, formed because of poor blood circulation…
While passing by the chamber, the diabetes specialist Dr. Taniela Singe explains that some come to have their legs amputated because diabetes has led to severe infection and gangrene. "Bandages need to be changed every day," says Dr. Singe, "but rural inhabitants cannot do this. So they have to remain here for a month."
Having read this fragment, Dmitry Semenovich literally shuddered! He vividly visualized the distant small island state of Tonga, misplaced in the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. He presented the people tanned under the southern sun. Such trusting and good. Like children. And defenseless before the terrible catastrophe – diabetes!!