Diabetes Leads to Health Problems: Be Warned. The pictures are very Graphic of my Wound

 Off to the right of these words, you will see the result of a abscess the formed on my right foot and became infected.

Okay, actually, what you are seeing is the result of two surgeries and a wound vac.

My foot has healed to a degree now where I can walk, but the scare still remains. Twice I had to go to a doctor and have surgery on my foot because of my weak immune system and the disease that makes it so, Diabetes.

Diabetes is a chronic physical illness that describes a malfunction in the way the body's blood uses sugar. Genetically, I was predisposed to this disease.

There are many of you out thee, African Americans, Native Americans, Samoans--all Pacific Islanders, who are more predisposed than others to developing Type II Diabetes.

If you are not eating healthily and exercising regularly the likelihood of something like what you see to the right happening to you at a younger age is higher. This happened to me in my thirties.

If you are fat, not overweight, fat... you are at risk.

Look, a muscular person is overweight. You know you are not just overweight if your belly is hanging out and you have enough tire around your waist to supply the needs of a small city!

Eat right. Exercise. Don't go to the gym one time in the whole year and lie to yourself that because you keep a membership you are tying to stay fit. Actually go. Find something to do to get moving a few hours a day.

Your doctor will tell you to get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day.  Do more. The only reason they tell us to do that 30 minutes is because telling us to get out for a few hours will cause us to mentally freeze.

You know good and well that thirty minutes of activity a day will not cause you to be fit. What it will do is stop you from being a couch potato. Find a health level you want to maintain, and maintain it before it gets too late and you end up like I have with diabetic health complications.

Do not let genetics and an unhealthy life lead you down a medically frustrating road or even death.

It took months to get back to walking and is taking years to get to a physical condition to take care of myself.

It is not just the wounds that get you because they heal. It is the emotional losses that come into play when you cannot work in the way to which your are accustomed.

It comes into play when you loose the ability to run or jump because the feeling in your extremities has diminished. I know people have found ways to overcome limitations, but with diabetes one complication comes after another. They compound after so many years and even start to be the cause of new issues themselves!.

To my Black people, my Latino and Polynesian people and to my Native American people... We are all more prone to this disease of Diabetes. Be warned! Diabetes is just the BEGINNING of our woes if we don't catch it early and postpone it--even prevent it.

To my kids, eat right or you will end up like daddy.