What Is Diabetes?
Written by GHP on 6:58 AMWhat is Diabetes?
Most of us have heard of diabetes. But what is diabetes exactly?
Here we will shed some light on the answer to “What is Diabetes?”
Types of Diabetes
So far there are three main types of diabetes known to us. We categorized these third types as type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes occurs during some pregnancies while type 1 and type 2 diabetes can occur at any time.
All types of diabetes result in too much sugar, or glucose, in the blood. To get a better understand of the reason behind this, it helps to understand how the body works. When we eat, our bodies break down the food into simpler forms such as glucose. Going into our bloodstreams, the glucose travels to all the cells in our bodies. This glucose is used for energy. A hormone made by the pancreas is called insulin, and its job is to help move the glucose from the bloodstream to the cells.
People with type 1 diabetes suffer from making very little insulin or no insulin at all; therefore they must take insulin shots in order to live. In contrast, people with type 2 diabetes and women with gestational diabetes do make insulin. However, the cells in their bodies are resistant to the action of insulin or their bodies don’t make enough insulin. In all three types of diabetes, the glucose remains in the bloodstream because the glucose does not get into the necessary cells. A buildup of glucose in the bloodstream results from this.
Type 1 diabetes usually starts during childhood or the early teenage years (about 50% of the time this occurs). As a result, type 1 diabetes was referred to as juvenile-onset diabetes. If you were a young child when the type 1 diabetes developed, it might have occurred so fast that you went into a coma, before anyone suspected diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes most often develops in adulthood and used to be called adult-onset diabetes. In contrast to type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes does not appear suddenly. You may exhibit no noticeable symptoms, or only mild symptoms for years before anything is detected, perhaps during a routine exam or blood test.
Gestational diabetes only appears during pregnancy in women with no previous history of type 1 or type 2 diabetes and usually goes away after pregnancy. Nowadays, most pregnant women are tested for gestational diabetes, usually during the 24th week of gestation. After pregnancy, 5 to 10 percent of women with gestational diabetes are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Women who develop gestational diabetes have a 20 to 50 percent risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the next 5 to 10 years.
What is Diabetes?
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