Educação em diabetes e mudanças nos hábitos de vida

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder with high prevalence in the world population. The most common is type 2 diabetes mellitus when the body becomes insulin resistant or does not produce enough insulin resulting in significantly reduced life expectancy and increased health care utilization. Self-care with the disease is complicated by the lack of adherence to treatment. Permanent health education emerges in this context in order to bring about change in attitudes and/or behavior allowing the acquisition of new knowledge about diabetes, awareness, qualification and updating of health professionals aiming at improving the quality of life of diabetics. This review article aims to demonstrate the importance of diabetes education in patients and health professionals, as well as the beneficial effects of changes in lifestyle in patients with diabetes. A literature review was performed using data from the Virtual Health Library (BVS), National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) and from the internet. We analyzed 106 articles and selected 18 articles that met the proposed objectives of this study. Health education is recognized as a fundamental part in the treatment of patients diabetics. The educational process provides patients with access to tools for developing self-care skills in order to increase the level of knowledge for disease management. Continuing education promotes changes in lifestyle including healthy diet, appropriate medication, and continuous exercise, reducing the risk of developing complications associated with DM2 or other associated comorbidities. Implementing changes in the lifestyle of these patients becomes challenging but essential to ensure quality of life.