Type 2 diabetes is a health problem where your body doesn’t use insulin properly. Insulin is super important because it helps our body use or store sugar from the food we eat.
So, without insulin working right, our blood sugar levels can get too high. That’s not good because over time, high blood sugar can hurt your body and cause other health problems.
What’s been done to help?
Scientists and doctors have been working for many years to find ways to help people with diabetes. Some people need to take medicine.
Everyone with diabetes, though, needs to make certain lifestyle changes. That means eating healthy food, exercising, and checking blood sugar levels regularly.
Sometimes, these changes can be hard to make and stick to. So, doctors have been exploring new ways to make this easier for people with diabetes. That’s where the idea of using smartphone apps came in!
The Cool New App
Now, let’s talk about the cool new app that scientists created! They made a special smartphone app that uses something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Sounds complicated, right? But it’s pretty simple.
CBT is a type of therapy that helps you understand how your thoughts affect your feelings and behaviors.
So, if you have a habit that’s not good for you, like eating too much candy, CBT can help you understand why you do it and how to change it.
The app was made for people with Type 2 diabetes to help them manage their blood sugar better. How?
Well, it gives each user personalized CBT lessons. That means the app will understand your specific struggles and offer help that’s made just for you!
How did they test the app?
The scientists who created the app wanted to be sure it would actually help people with diabetes. So, they did a big experiment called a ‘randomized controlled trial’.
They had 668 people with diabetes use the app. These people were of different ages, genders, and backgrounds.
For example, they had both men and women, and people who were Black and Latino. The important thing is they all had Type 2 diabetes and a smartphone.
The people in the study were split into two groups. One group got to use the special CBT app. The other group used a control app, which asked some questions but didn’t give personalized advice.
What happened next?
After three months and then six months, the scientists looked at how well everyone was doing. They especially looked at something called HbA1c levels in the users’ blood.
HbA1c is a fancy term that doctors use to measure average blood sugar levels over the past two to three months.
The exciting results!
The results were super exciting! People who used the CBT app saw their blood sugar levels go down significantly. Even better, they didn’t need as much medicine to control their diabetes.
The coolest part? The more CBT lessons the people completed in the app, the better their results were. That means if you work hard at learning from the app, it can really help you!
Also, this didn’t take much time. Users typically spent less than six minutes a day using the app. That’s like taking a tiny break to play a game on your phone, but instead, you’re doing something really good for your health!
What’s next?
Of course, the scientists want to learn more about how this cool app can help people. They’re doing more experiments to see if it can help in other ways and if it would work as well over a longer time.
But for now, it’s really exciting to see how a simple smartphone app could make such a big difference for people with diabetes.
Maybe in the future, more health problems could be managed with the help of technology like this!
Wrapping it up
So, this is a pretty awesome story about how technology and medicine can work together. This cool new app could change the way we manage diabetes.
It could help people to live healthier and happier lives. And who knows what other exciting things scientists might come up with next?
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about new way to achieve type 2 diabetes remission, and one avocado a day keeps diabetes at bay.
If you care about health, please read studies about vitamin K deficiency linked to hip fractures in old people, and these vitamins could help reduce bone fracture risk.
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