What is Diabetes?

Anyone that reads this blog will need a working knowledge of diabetes to be abl to relate to my stress and heartache with this disease. I would also love to help spread awareness about diabetes, specifically type 1 diabetes, and also help to eliminate some of the misconceptions about the disease. The information I am sharing is what I have gathered through my own reading and research, and through on-going education as part of managing my son's disease. Type 1 Diabetes used to be called juvenile diabetes because it usually affects children. However, we now know that teens and adults can be diagnosed with this type so th term "juvenile" is not appropriate. T1D is an autoimmune disease, which means the immune system attacks the body's insulin producing cells, called beta cells, which are i the pancreas. Once the beta cells aree damaged, they cannot produce insulin, so T1 diabetics must take daily insulin shots. Insulin is a hormone that, among other things, allows your body's cells access to energy from the food you eat. There is no cure. There is no way to contract or prevent this disease. It is not caused by eating sugar or by being overweight. Type 2 Diabetes used to be called adult onset diabetes, but as I mentioed above, that label is not appropriate when adults can have type 1 diabetes as well. In this type of diabetes, the body is becomes resistant to insulin. As the insulin becomes less effective, the pancreas produces more and more insulin, causing further resistance and a vicious cycle of more insulin ands more resistance. Another function of insulin is to store extra energy as fat. This means that as the type 2 person's body keeps pumping out insulin that cannot be used, more of the food they consume is being stored as fat. That is why type 2 diabetics are usually overweight. Losing weight can often reduce or eliminate the disease, but most people need to use an oral medication along with following a special diet to control their symptoms. These are obviously two very different diseases, so why do they share a name??! They both affect the pancreas and involve insulin. They both have the same warning signs, including: -Excessive thirst -Frequent urination -Excessive hunger They both have the same frightening list of complications if the disease is not managed properly, including: -blindness -loss of limbs/amputations -kidney damage/failure -heart disease -nerve damage -coma -death Type 2 Disbetes often goes undiagnosed for years, so the risk of complication is higher and faster than it is for type 1. I would also like to think that this is also because of the tireless care provided by the parents of diabetic kids. But these risks are very real, and those of us who love a diabetic work very hard to delay them as much as possible. That's enough info for one day. Thanks for reading! More on this subject to come. :)