Question: What is the relationship between heart attack or stroke and diabetes?

Dr. Thaddeus Bell: One of the things that we are founding out is that in the literature is also documented that patients don't have a good understanding of what we refer to as comobilities and by that I mean other diseases that can occur as a result of you having one disease.

For example most people who have diabetes also have hypertension, and they also have elevated cholesterol. They can develop comobilities if they don't keep the diabetes, the cholesterol, and the hypertension on the control and by that I mean if you don't keep those three things under control then you are at risk for developing a heart attack or having stroke or going blind perhaps losing the functioning of your kidneys, developing kidney failure also losing your ability to walk for one block and you would develop those kinds of problems if you don't keep the diabetes under control.

So, it's very, very important to recognize that they are all interrelated and the research has shown that doctors have not done a good job in explaining this to patients because of the time element that's placed upon us when we are seeing patients.