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What is Diabetes ?
Diabetes, more accurately diabetes mellitus is simply too much sugar, in the form of glucose, in the
blood.
Diabetes and High Blood Glucose Level
After we have eaten, digested and absorbed food containing carbohydrate, the blood glucose level in our body increases. In response to the increase blood glucose level , the pancreas releases the correct amount of insulin into our blood to carry the extra blood glucose into the cells. The blood glucose level in our body then returns to its pre-meal level. That's the way the body system is supposed to work.
If you don't have diabetes, your blood glucose level never goes too high or too low. No matter how much or how little carbohydrate you eat the body system balances the body blood glucose level itself.
Diabetes occurs when the body system which controls the blood glucose level no longer works properly. The body thus loses its main source of fuel for energy even though the blood contains large amounts of glucose. As a result, glucose builds up in the blood, overflows into the urine, and passes out of the body.
Glucose is used by our body for energy or stored as glycogen in the liver and muscle or turn into body fat packed as fat tissue and insulin is the key to open the door for glucose to enter the body cells, muscles, liver and fat tissues.
Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, attached itself to the
glucose in the blood and locks itself into the receptor site to allow
the glucose to pass through the cell wall into the cells.
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There are 2 main types of Diabetes :
- Type 1 Diabetes
- Type 2 Diabetes
Type 1 Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes results from damage or deterioration in pancreatic function that leads to a complete lack of insulin production.
Type 1 diabetes symptom can develop at any age, but is more common in childhood, during the teens or in early adulthood. Type 1 diabetes usually develops in children and juvenile diabetes accounts for 5% to 10% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes.
If not treated promptly, blood glucose level rises. As the glucose cannot get into the cells, our body begins burning up its fat stores too quickly (ketosis) and our breath smells of acetone. Type 1 diabetic patient may vomit, become dehydrated, feel drowsy and if left untreated, will eventually lapse into a coma.
Type 1 diabetes selfcare and treatment is a combination of insulin injection
and a healthy diabetic diet plan.
Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90% of America diabetic cases and results from an insufficiency in insulin production and /or resistance to insulin action.
Excess body fat restricts the action of insulin carrying glucose into the body's cells resulting in insulin resistance.
The pancreas of a person with insulin resistance is always working overtime. For such a person the essential conversion of glucose into energy take place ineffectively. Thus more insulin is required to convert the glucose and the pancreas as a result is continuously working overtime to secrete more insulin.
With time, the pancreatic function of Type 2 diabetic
patient frequently deteriorates and diabetes medication may be required to help control
high blood glucose level.
Type 2 diabetes sometimes called "adult onset diabetes" usually develops in people over the age of forty. Over the last decades Type 2 diabetic cases begun to emerge amongst the younger generation due largely to obesity and inactive lifestyles.
A number of factors may influence the development of Type 2 diabetes symptom, most importantly:
- family diabetes history
- age
- overweight & inactive
- stress
- alcohol abuse
Type 2 diabetes selfcare involves a healthy diabetic diet plan and exercise, diabetes medication and insulin if medication is not enough to control the high blood glucose level.
For the obese and overweight person, losing weight and increased daily physical activity
level is the most
important part of a healthy diabetic diet plan.
Diabetes Self-care - The Hidden Danger of Diabetes
Diabetes is a chronic, debilitating, long term disease.
It can strike at any age , but it is mostly associated with middle age. Cause of diabetes are both genetic and lifestyle related.
Diabetes affects your quality of life and endanger your health. The presence of diabetes increases the risk of heart disease by about threefold.
Diabetes is also probably the single greatest cause of male impotence and erectile dysfunction affecting diabetic men as diabetes cause vascular disease and nerve damage that directly affects the male diabetic patient ability to achieve erection for sexual intercourse.
Those suffering from diabetes must be on a healthy diabetic diet plan, and for the more severe cases take diabetes medication and regular insulin injections.
Untreated, diabetes can lead to heart attacks, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, decreased blood flow in the legs and decreased sensation (neuropathy) in the feet due to the destruction of sensory nerves. Ultimately, diabetes can lead to foot gangrene and amputation or even death.
A healthy diabetic diet plan and diabetes self care management is thus of utmost importance in our day to day control of diabetes.
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