World Diabetes Day is on Sunday.
In the interview, the retired Peißenberg doctor and diabetologist Ruth Ganzert-Köhler (75) talks about her own experiences and an illness that still leads many on the wrong track.
Ms. Ganzert-Köhler, how did you get so interested in diabetes?
In fact, I did not receive any further training as a diabetologist until I was 63. Before that, I had worked as a senior physician at the Peißenberg Hospital for 30 years.
But the topic has occupied me all my life, because my sister and also my nephew had type 1 diabetes.
This is diabetes that occurs mainly in children and adolescents.
Exactly. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, and those affected have to supply the body with insulin from the outside. Type 2 diabetes is colloquially called old-age diabetes because it usually occurs in older people, favored by obesity, poor diet and smoking at a young age. 95 percent of all diabetes cases in Germany are type 2, only the small remainder are type 1. But due to lack of exercise and obesity, more and more children are actually affected by so-called adult diabetes. I got to know this myself during my time at the specialist clinic in Bad Heilbrunn. According to the Robert Koch Institute, around 1,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 17 suffered from type 2 diabetes in 2019. But they usually don't need an insulin injection,while the type 2 cases would otherwise die sooner or later.
It was probably a difficult time for your sister at the time because of the lack of technical means.
Yes.
Before you are diagnosed with diabetes, you are always very thirsty, and so was my sister.
But at school she was told to stop doing that.
Then my mother realized that it could be diabetes, and my sister was almost in a coma.
After that, she was given insulin injections once or twice a day.
But there was still no real way to measure blood sugar.
I still remember that my mother used to boil my sister's urine to determine the value.
Today there are small sensors that you wear on your arm and that constantly measure your blood sugar, and insulin delivery has also become much easier with a pen or a pump - this development should have inspired you.
Of course, a lot has happened in the past few years.
But ultimately it remains a disease that accompanies you for a lifetime.
The children and adults always have to think about their blood sugar level, what and how much they want to eat - it keeps you busy around the clock.
And those affected are still not dealt with adequately.
Do you have an example?
As a school coach, I am in contact with youth welfare. There I met an eleven-year-old boy who had been suffering from diabetes since he was twelve months old. He was literally pushed from school to school, that's bottomless. He was forbidden to eat during class, which is essential for diabetics because of the threat of hypoglycaemia. Sometimes there is complete ignorance, I complained to the headmistress at the time. There is namely the possibility of training teachers, which often works well. Another child got a school helper who previously only dealt with people in old people's homes, who couldn't deal with a young type 1 diabetic. Unfortunately, there are still many such negative examples. There is no reasonwhy a diabetic today cannot enjoy normal academic and professional development. Thanks to the invention 100 years ago, children no longer have to die of diabetes.
How did it go with your sister?
Despite the problems and the lack of technical possibilities at the time, she still had a long life and only developed problems with her eyes at a late stage, a typical result of diabetes.