Riding the Diabetes Rollercoaster: A Complete Resource for EMQs, v. 2

by Helen Cooper, Robert Geyer

Overview

This work includes foreword by Ian Botham, OBE, former England Cricket Captain and father of a daughter with Type 1 Diabetes. This groundbreaking book reveals how science and medicine have traditionally tried to make diabetes simple and orderly, despite its obvious messiness and complexity. The result has left patients, carers and health professionals confused and frustrated. Using complexity science, "Riding the Diabetes Rollercoaster" provides a radical new approach to understanding and managing diabetes that embraces its uncertainties and challenges. From a complexity perspective, the diabetes rollercoaster is normal and is a mirror of life itself. Learning to embrace and use the tools of complexity can completely alter your approach to diabetes. "Despite huge amounts of research, funding and effort, diabetes - like many other chronic illnesses - refuses to go away or even to get any easier to deal with. Health professionals have grown increasingly frustrated with their inability to develop radical improvements; patients and carers struggle to comply with complicated self management regimes. We believe that Complexity offers a way forward. Learning to balance rather than control diabetes is the ultimate goal of diabetes management." - Helen Cooper and Robert Geyer, in the Preface.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781315347516
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	04/19/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Helen Cooper, Robert Geyer

Table of Contents

Diabetes and its treatment: yesterday and today. What is complexity? Learning how to use 'complexity mapping'. Learning to play the right mind games: moving from anxiety to balance. Managing the complexities of diabetes. Diabetes and the 'cascade of complexity'. Complementary management of diabetes. A call for personal and professional reaction.

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Betsy Bennet, MD (University of Chicago Medical Center)
Description: This book describes how the complexity paradigm can provide a better way to address diabetes.
Purpose: The purpose is to illustrate how traditional medicine, which conveys the concept that diabetes management is straightforward and simple, is inadequate. The authors provide the opportunity to see diabetes through a new perspective. They identify interactions that influence diabetes. By understanding these complex interactions, the authors believe patients, their support network, and healthcare providers may better comprehend and manage diabetes.
Audience: The authors intend this book for healthcare professionals, patients, and carers. However, it is most applicable for patients, most likely patients who are already doing well with their diabetes. The authors appear to have thoroughly researched the subject.
Features: The book identifies the inadequacies in the current concepts and management of diabetes. It attempts to provide a different viewpoint to capture the complex interactions that influence the evolution and outcome of diabetes. It postulates that by understanding the complexities that influence diabetes, one will be able to not only deal with the disease better, but positively affect one's own overall well-being as well. The book provides some helpful tools to assist patients in dealing with complexity, such as relaxation techniques. However, several chapters are repetitious and abstract.
Assessment: While the book is well written, it does not provide specific insights into the inadequacies of current diabetes management or to improving care. However, it may be of value for patients struggling with the complexity of the disease.

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