Go crackers and see the importance of awareness

8:10am Thursday 7th December 2006

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HAVE you ever heard of Diabetes Insipidus? It is totally different to the better known, or more common, Diabetes Mellitus and the symptoms include raging thirst and passing large quantities of urine.

This year the National Pituitary Awareness Day focussed on Diabetes Insipidus because it believed there was much ignorance about the condition.

The charity supports people living with pituitary disorders and acts as a public voice, endeavouring to raise awareness of a different type of disorder in the extremely vital little gland.

Three members from Hay-on-Wye, Niven Jenkins, Rob Lally and Anita Evans, all people suffering with a variety of pituitary conditions, have issued a challenge to readers to find out for themselves what the condition feels like.

It involves eating a pile of cream crackers in a set time without a drink.

The rules are: Go for one hour without a drink - eat five dry cream crackers in four minutes - wait for half-an-hour, still without a drink - eat another five cream crackers in four minutes - wait one hour afterwards.

They say you will end up with a mouth so dry you will think you have eaten sand.

Niven, Rob and Anita continue to raise money for The Pituitary Foundation and thank people in Hay-on-Wye for their support. An event earlier in the year at Summerhill Golf Course raised £3,700.

They say this has enabled a complete update of the website www.pituitary.org.uk which directly benefits pituitary patients, carers, families and the medical community in general by easy access to high quality information and a forum for discussion.