Get to know Diabetes Basics!

- November 13, 2019

Life is not over because you have diabetes. Make the most of what you have, be grateful. Many people say that if a person has diabetes, they are going to die. This is wrong. Yes, it is a very bad disease but if you follow your physician’s advice, you can live as long as a healthy person. Diabetes is a non-communicable disease that makes your body not produce enough insulin or does not use insulin well. A non-communicable disease is a disease that is not transmitted from one person to another. Non-communicable diseases are also called chronic diseases because they are not curable. When a person has diabetes, it cannot be diagnosed with an eye, it needs medical laboratories and it has its own treatment. We are going to know more about what is diabetes, and how it diagnosed and the way it can be treated or the medicine that Diabetic people take.

As mentioned above, when a person has diabetes, his or her body, mainly the pancreas is not able to produce enough insulin; a hormone made by the pancreas, or using it well. The body is made up of many cells and each cell needs sugar or glucose for energy. This glucose comes from the foods you eat. Insulin then helps or allows the glucose to get into the cells to make energy. So a person with not enough insulin which acts a key to allow the glucose in the cell, might most of the times feel week due to lack of energy. And, when this glucose is not able to get into the cells, it just circulates in the blood making a person have a high level of sugar in their blood. This is also called having a high blood sugar. Check out this post for more information.

There are different kinds of diabetes that people can have. The main two are type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and the minor which is Gestational diabetes. The type 1 diabetes is the most common in children, teens and young adults. In this type, the body does not make insulin. People with this type 1 diabetes need to take insulin daily to survive. The type 2 diabetes is more common in adults. The body does not use insulin well and you might need pills to help the body use insulin well but some people might need insulin as well. The other type is gestational diabetes. As it name says, it develops in some pregnant women. But this type of diabetes most of the times goes away after the baby is born, but the person may have a chance to get type 2 diabetes later in their life. To learn more about these types of diabetes, check out this link.

About 30.3 million people in the United States or 9.4% of the population have diabetes. This post What is Diabetes? Will give you other statistics. There are some avoidable risks factors of Diabetes. For the type 1 diabetes, the risk factors include family history; if you have a parent or a sibling with type 1 diabetes, if you are younger than 14 years since type 1 diabetes is likely to develop in children. For type 2 diabetes, the risk factors include family history of the disease, a history of gestational diabetes and being older than 45 years since it is most common in adult people. For the gestational diabetes, the risk factors include a family or personal history of diabetes, being overweight or obese and unhealthy diet might increase the chances of getting the diabetes. For more risk factors check out this post Type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes risk factors.

When a body is not able to produce insulin, it makes the body not access glucose hence circulating in the blood making a person have a high blood sugar. The different types of diabetes may vary across ages where the type 1 diabetes occurs in children younger than 14 years, the type 2 diabetes occur in adult people and the gestational diabetes that occurs in pregnant women. The author of the blog recommends people to know more about their family history if there is a parent or a sibling who has diabetes and if there are, they should speak to their doctors so as to find a way of preventing it or start the treatment earlier.