target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#u6c11b61c-6ac0-536f-ba94-f73ac26261b1">11 Recipes for Love 159
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About the Authors
Janis Roszler, LMFT, RD, LD/N, CDE, FAND
Janis is the 2008–2009 AADE Diabetes Edu-cator of the Year. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, certi-fied diabetes educator, registered dietitian and award-winning medical media producer.
Donna Rice, MBA, BSN, RN, CDE, FAADE
Donna is the past president of the American Association of Diabetes Educators and has held numerous positions nationally and on a state and local level to advance the care of individu-als with diabetes. She is a registered nurse and certified diabetes educator who speaks on a va-riety of diabetes-related topics, with a passion and expertise in sexual health. In addition to launching a national sexual health program in Farmington Hills, MI, Donna is also the author and coauthor of numerous consumer and peer-reviewed articles and books related to diabetes and sexual health.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the loving people with diabetes who contributed to our knowledge and expertise by sharing the most intimate parts of their lives. We would also like to thank Michael Eisenstein and Victor Van Beuren of the American Diabetes Association for their enthusiastic encouragement and support. Special thanks goes to the late R. Keith Campbell, RPh, MBA, CDE, FASHP, FAPhA, FAADE, and to Chey-enne Newsome, PharmD, PhC, BCACP, who provided additional phar-maceutical information.
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Foreword to First Edition
How exciting! When I received the invitation to write the foreword to Sex and Diabetes, I immediately became quite nostalgic. As Surgeon General of the United States (1993–1994) during the Clinton administration, I voiced the need for a responsible and com-prehensive sex education program for our nation, and now, to my great delight, I have the opportunity to speak again about this very topic.
Humans are passionate beings who love to be loved, held, and con-nected to others on both a physical and emotional level. This closeness affects our quality of life and ability to withstand the stresses of an ev-er-changing world. Our intimate relationships support us through tough times and also help us celebrate joyous ones.
When these intimate bonds are hampered by a medical condition like diabetes, the negative effects can resonate throughout every area of our lives—our support systems can become strained, our self-confidence may wane, and our ability to face daily health challenges can waver. Sadly, as important as this area of our life is to our overall health, very few people with sexual complications seek help, and only a handful of medical pro-fessionals will mention this topic during a visit.
This book is long overdue. As one of the first books on diabetes-related sexual complications, I am certain that it will help a great number of individuals. Sex and Diabetes discusses diabetes-related sexual complica-tions in both men and women, offers treatment options, suggests ways to enhance intimate communication, teaches how to avoid fraudulent
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products, offers advice on how to discuss sexual complications with a health care provider, and even suggests ways to help rekindle the ro-mance and fun in your relationship. It even contains a delicious assort-ment of enticing aphrodisiac recipes!
Enjoy this book. Use it to help guide you to a more fulfilling and meaningful intimate relationship. Share it with someone you love and use that strength to enrich all areas of your life.
Joycelyn Elders, MD
Former Surgeon General of the United States (1993–1994)
Distinguished Professor of Public Health University of Arkansas Medical School
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Foreword to Current Edition
We are all connected. This is the theme of my book, Addict America: The Lost Connection, which explores how any dis-ruption in our connection to ourselves, each other, and the universal life force leads to a lack of intimacy in our relationships. I am delighted to write this forward for a book that explores this theme from another perspective.
Roszler and Rice, the authors of this amazing and much-needed book, are truly groundbreaking risk-takers in that they are tackling a subject that is generally avoided in the medical world—sexual intimacy. They dive into this theme of disconnection as they discuss how diabetes creates a barrier to sexual intimacy in relationships and then how to overcome those barriers.
Doctors rarely talk about it because, first, many are not trained very well, if at all, in sexual health. Second, doctors are focused on keep-ing patients medically healthy. The fact is, emotional health—which in-cludes self-esteem, relationships, and intimacy—contributes enormously to physical health and is integral to human well-being. In the first edition of this book, Roszler and Rice, both diabetes experts, introduced the public to some solutions to the sexual challenges of living with diabetes. During the writing of this second edition, Roszler became certified as a sex therapist and infused that education into the holistic approach both authors take to the overall health of people living with diabetes.
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As a certified sex therapist, I always suggest to my clients that they reframe the purpose of sex from having sex to be intimate to experienc-ing intimacy and expressing it in a variety of ways, one of which is sexual. When we can all do this, then how we behave sexually is less important than engaging in mutual sexual pleasure in a variety of ways. Individu-als experiencing the effects of diabetes may become less focused on how their bodies are not responding and more focused on the connection and sharing of physical touch.
Diabetes seems to exaggerate the problems with self-esteem, body im-age, and performance expectations of self and others that most of us ex-perience in our lives. The authors address the physical challenges people with diabetes and their partners face; readers of this book can benefit from an altered perspective on sex as an expression of intimacy and fo-cus less on the stereotypes that the media and society have taught us to aspire to.
Ignorance is not always bliss, and we don’t know what we don’t know. This applies to our medical and other health care providers and can lead to great suffering. Roszler and Rice inform the readers of what they don’t know and then educate them about choices and options for happy, healthy, and intimate sexuality.
Carol L. Clark, PhD
President