Diabetes Awareness Week – Managing diabetes while having cancer

This week is Diabetes Awareness week. About  1 in 5 people with cancer also have diabetes. Managing diabetes while undergoing cancer treatment can be particularly challenging. In this blog, content channel editor Tania talks about the ways in which cancer can impacts diabetes, and how to manage the two conditions.

Diabetes is a condition where there is too much sugar (glucose) in the blood. The amount of sugar is usually controlled by the insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Having diabetes means the pancreas doesn’t produce any insulin (type 1 diabetes), or not enough (type 2 diabetes).

The aim of diabetes treatments is to keep the amount of sugar in the blood as normal as possible. However, this can be more difficult to manage while having cancer.

Cancer can affect diabetes in different ways:

• Some treatments (steroids, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormonal and targeted therapies) can affect the amount of sugar in the blood, which can get too high or drop too low.
• Illness and stress can increase the sugar in the blood. This helps the body fight the illness or deal with the stress.
• Loss of appetite and being less active as the result of cancer treatment, can also affect the level of sugar in the blood.

How to manage the two conditions
Being diagnosed with cancer can be overwhelming, and put everything else in second place. However, it’s important to manage the two conditions together.

Here are three important steps to take:

1. Make sure to tell your cancer team you have diabetes, so that treatment can be planned more carefully.
2. During cancer treatment, you might need to change your diabetes medicine to keep a safe amount of sugar in the blood. Talk with your diabetes team about possible changes in the medicines you take.
3. Everyone with diabetes undergoing cancer treatment should monitor their blood sugar regularly. If you don’t already have monitoring equipment, ask you diabetes team, they can get you some and teach you how to use it.

Short-term changes in blood sugar don’t usually have long-term effects, but very high, or too low, blood sugar should be avoided. Maintaining a healthy life-style can help you keep your blood sugar at normal levels, and improve general well-being.

If you want more information on diabetes and cancer, have a look at our booklet Diabetes and cancer treatment, produced in collaboration with Diabetes UK. It has tips on how to manage the two conditions, as well as ways to cope with the side effects of cancer treatment.

For more information about diabetes, you can contact Diabetes UK. Call their helpline free on 0345 123 2399 if you live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. Or call 0141 212 8710 if you live in Scotland. It’s open Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm. Or visit diabetes.org.uk

To see what else Macmillan's cancer information team has been blogging about, please visit our blog home page! You can subscribe to receive our blogs by email or RSS too.

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