Need to reimagine, rethink, & reassess diabetes to check its alarming rise

Tam L&M

Digital therapeutics (DTx) brand Fitterfly released its year-end report called Reimagining Diabetes Care Report 2022 for the period January-December 2022. Based on a sample size of over 3,000 people who enrolled into Fitterfly’s Diabetes Management programs, the report underscores the need to reimagine, rethink, and reassess diabetes before it reaches pandemic proportions. It also endeavours to understand the missing link in the diabetes care circle.

One of the reasons why the numbers are exponentially increasing is the fact that Type 2 diabetes is a complex phenomenon with multiple factors like nutrition, stress, fitness, sleep, and pain affecting the condition.

Some insights from the report –

The data shows that younger people are now seeking solutions for diabetes management. About 38 per cent of people with diabetes were in the 31 to 45-year category and about 5 per cent were below 30 years of age.

People from non-metros (45 per cent) were also more aware and were using new-age digital therapies for managing diabetes.

It was also found that there is a strong connection between obesity and diabetes with over 89 per cent of the people with this condition being overweight or obese. Of the respondents, 56 per cent either had hypertension or high cholesterol and 14 per cent had underlying conditions such as PCOS or hypothyroidism – all of which were a part of the metabolic syndrome.

As per the report, about 51 per cent of the respondents were diagnosed with diabetes in the last five years and are in the golden period of achieving remission. Even if half of all Indians diagnosed with diabetes are able to avoid medicines, it would have a direct impact on expenses as well as productivity.

Stress levels were higher among at least 63 per cent of the respondents in the age group of 18 to 30 years. While 58 per cent of this was due to an emotional burden, the remainder was due to the stress of managing diabetes (42 per cent and physician distress (29 per cent It is interesting to note that there was a progressive reduction after the age of 60 and only 28 per cent of respondents experienced elevated stress levels.

Speaking about this, Dr Arbinder Singal, Co-Founder and CEO, Fitterfly, said, “Even with the availability of more doctors, better medications, cheaper blood tests and online access to virtually all aspects of diabetes care, the tide of diabetes or its complications continues unabated. Our data is showing for the first time that people with diabetes in India are adopting digital therapies as the first line of treatment or adjuvant to pills with good efficacy. This adoption is not only limited to metro’s but also in smaller cities. The multimodal approach covering personalised nutrition, stress & sleep management and getting them to fitness cover the missing pieces for diabetes care on a day-to-day basis. Use of technology to cover these as a digital therapeutics program has led to outcomes which are better or equal to conventional pharmacotherapy. We believe large-scale adoption of technology is the only way to improve outcomes and make a dent in the diabetes burden in India. With our expanding partnerships with doctors, employers, wellness and insurance companies, we hope that 2023 will be much  better than 2022..”

The findings indicated that people who enrolled in Fitterfly’s programme experienced improvement across different levels namely BMI, weight, calorie intake, exercise, pain threshold, stress, and sleep. Around 85 per cent of members reduced their HbA1c by an average of 1.6 per cent which is comparable to a combination drug therapy for diabetes.

The average exercise duration also increased by 61 per cent to 337 mins from the earlier 180 mins.