Why Should you Join Diabetes Chat Rooms?
Can Diabetes Support Groups Online Help Me?
Caring for a diabetic person or living with diabetes usually means constant stress as well as constant decision-making. Unfortunately, in some cases, healthcare providers are not always available to answer diabetes-related questions.
For instant for diabetes-related information, and diabetes support, diabetics and caregivers sometimes turn to peer support rooms and DOCs (Diabetes Online Communities) such as diabetes chat rooms.
What are Diabetes Chat Rooms?
Many diabetes support communities are created by diabetics and are safe places where people affected by the disease can learn from others, provide information, and seek advice from others without judgment, stigma, or fear. People with diabetes reap numerous tangible benefits from joining a Diabetes Online Community.
Some of these benefits include greater social connectedness, lower levels of diabetes distress and anxiety, improved stress management, improved blood sugar management, and reducing the risk of diabetes-related complications.
These and other numerous benefits are part of the reason why these communities are catching on all over the globe. Not only are we seeing more people participating, but we are also seeing more communities each year.
Diabetes educators and diabetics alike have been discussing the benefits of joining DOCs for decades. Although they knew the facts, they just didn’t have the research and data to back it up. However, now researchers have started collecting more and more data on the benefits of diabetes chat rooms.
Online peer support groups were the trending topics at the 2019 ADCES (Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialist) conference, largely due to a review of 47 studies published in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology in May 2019. More recently, a meta-analysis of 9 DOC reviews shows that being involved in a diabetes chat rooms is associated with significant improvements in behavioral, psychological, and clinical aspects of health.
Science-backed benefits of joining peer support groups
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Social Connectedness
Diabetes can have a negative impact on the social lives of people living with diabetes, caregivers, as well as their friends and relatives. This is particularly true for people living with type 2 diabetes particularly because they avoid sharing their diagnosis with friends, colleagues as well as family members due to the fear of stigma.
Diabetes chat rooms help diabetics create and join support networks that understand the nuances of managing diabetes on a deeper level. Therefore, they don’t feel alone.
The May 2019 review also found that diabetics who join and are actively involved in diabetes chat rooms experience a higher quality of life as compared to the general population of diabetics. This results in part from social support, empowerment, and shared experiences resulting from social connections created in diabetes chat rooms.
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May Improve Glycemic and A1C Levels
According to the same 2019 review, diabetes chat rooms were also associated with stable A1C levels in adolescents. This is a positive sign, particularly because adolescents’ A1C levels tend to increase especially during this life stage.
On the other hand, the use of diabetes chat rooms in adults is associated with improved A1C levels. A1C shows the average blood glucose levels over the last 2 or 3 months. Besides being used to diagnose diabetes, A1C is also used to monitor and determine the efficacy of diabetes eating plans.
Although everyone with diabetes has different goals, generally, A1C levels of less than 7% mean better blood glucose control and a significantly lower risk of complications related to diabetes. According to a study published in the JMIR Diabetes journal in 2009, highly engaged diabetes chat room users tend to have better glycemic levels than diabetics with lower engagement.
This can be attributed to the fact that involvement in diabetes chat rooms offers accountability, which tends to motivate users to be keener about their blood glucose levels.
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Encourages Healthier Self-Care Activities
The Future Science OA July 2018 issue published a study that showed that diabetes chat rooms tend to encourage users to perform better self-care activities compared to non-users. These activities include eating a healthy diet, regular exercise, checking glucose levels, and taking medication and insulin.
Diabetes chat rooms also provide convenient places for people with diabetes to crowd-source answers and solutions to self-care concerns such the best systems for monitoring blood glucose levels, weight loss, and the best foods for people living with diabetes. This helps set up diabetics for long-term success
Although there are numerous benefits of joining diabetes chat rooms, it is essential to keep in mind that they don’t replace advice from medical practitioners. This is particularly because misinformation in the digital era is a real concern. However, according to a study published in the Current Diabetes Reviews, misinformation in diabetes chat rooms was uncommon (ranging between 0% and 9% of all posts).
