Diabetes Disease Basics

If you are at risk for diabetes or have been recently diagnosed, odds are that you are still trying to break down what you have been learning and to make sense of it all. Here is the lay-person's version of what is going on when you are diagnosed or at risk for the disease. To really get the basics of diabetes and how to manage it, you must first understand how your body’s digestive system works.

For a person diagnosed with diabetes, blood glucose levels are above normal. Most of the food we eat is turned into glucose, or sugar, for our bodies to use for energy. The pancreas is an organ that lies just behind and under the stomach. It produces a hormone called insulin to help glucose get into the cells of our bodies. Our cells need this glucose to give us energy. This is the why so many people feel tired when they have untreated diabetes; their cells are being starved of glucose.

Insulin regulates the various chemical processes associated with how carbohydrates interact in our bodies. When you have diabetes, your body either doesn't make enough insulin or can't use its own insulin as well as it should. This causes sugar/glucose to build up in your blood. This sugar/glucose then hangs around in your blood streams and creates all kinds of havoc within our bodies. Diabetes is sometimes called the “silent killer” for this reason; we do not see the damage that is being caused.

The digestion process is very complex and involves chemistry, physics, biology. Click here to view the digestion process using a Type Free Interactive Learning Module. It may help to think of the complicated digestive process by associating it with an analogy.

The Pancreas with the digestive systemThink of your body as a city and the city streets as your bloodstream. During rush hour (after a meal), the streets are congested with vehicles (sugar molecules). Ideally, traffic attendants will usher the vehicles into parking decks so that the drivers can store their cars, disembark and go to work.

In a city, if the parking attendant is not available to help the cars park, then the cars will continue to circulate. The constant circulation not only leads to congestion, but the heavy traffic also wears down the roads and exhausts the whole circulation system. Furthermore, workers are not even able to get out of their cars to do their jobs. As you can see, the role of the parking attendant is crucial to the traffic pattern. Without the parking attendant, the city faces serious complications.

In a body, insulin acts like those parking attendants by helping to control the sugar traffic in your bloodstream so that the sugar can be broken down into usable units of energy that can give power to your body throughout the day. (Remember: your body needs energy to do more than just play sports or walk the dog. You also need energy for your muscles and organs to function.)

In order to ensure that sugar molecules are removed from the bloodstream and turned into energy, individuals with Diabetes must carefully control the amount of sugar in their bodies. You can control your blood sugar level by taking medication, increasing your physical activity and decreasing the amount of sugar-heavy foods that you eat. Take a moment and click here to better understand the role of carbohydrates and sugar-heavy foods on diabetes.

We sometimes think we are genetically immune to the diseases of our parents and our extended family. If you have recently been diagnosed with Diabetes or have a loved one who was recently diagnosed, you may want to encourage other family members to get screened for the disease. Diabetes can cause serious health complications including heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, and lower-extremity amputations. Catching Diabetes early will help to prevent serious complications that can occur if the diseases goes untreated.

Here are some of the symptoms that you might or might not have. If you think you might have diabetes, please check with your doctor.

• Frequent urination
• Excessive thirst
• Unexplained weight loss
• Extreme hunger
• Sudden vision changes
• Tingling or numbness in hands or feet
• Feeling very tired much of the time
• Very dry skin
• Sores that are slow to heal
• More infections than usual.

Nausea, vomiting, or stomach pains may accompany some of these symptoms in the abrupt onset of insulin-dependent diabetes, now called type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes may account for 5% to 10% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Type 2 diabetes may account for about 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that only pregnant women get. If not treated, it can cause problems for mothers and babies. Gestational diabetes develops in 2% to 5% of all pregnancies but usually disappears when a pregnancy is over.

Eating nutritious food, more physical activity, and insulin injections are the basic therapies for type 1 diabetes. The amount of insulin taken must be balanced with food intake and daily activities. Blood glucose levels must be closely monitored through frequent blood glucose testing.

Eating nutritious food, more physical activity, and blood glucose testing are the basic therapies for type 2 diabetes. In addition, many people with type 2 diabetes require oral medication, insulin, or both to control their blood glucose levels.

People with diabetes must take responsibility for their day-to-day care, and keep blood glucose levels in control; it should not fluctuate from going too low to too high.

If you have diabetes, see a health care provider who will monitor your blood sugar control and help you learn to manage your diabetes. In addition, you may need to see an endocrinologist. They specialize in the treatment of hormone disorders such as diabetes. You will also need an ophthalmologist for eye examinations; a podiatrist for routine foot care. Dietitians and diabetes educators teach the skills needed for daily diabetes management. Your primary care physician can recommend a specialist in any one of these fields to you, should you need it.

Diabetes is a very complex disease, with many complications if it is not aggressively treated and managed. This is the simplified version of the basics. It provides a good foundation for many follow-up questions with your health care provider/s. Make a choice to be aggressive about your care if you have been recently diagnosed or are at risk.