Onset of Diabetes.

People are made up more than blood glucose levels there are feelings and emotions involved and how you deal with your diabetes challenges will determine if your disease is a minor inconvenience or major sickness you deal need to manage with on a daily basis.

Diabetes just doesn’t affect you but also you will want the support of your family, friends and colleagues and each of these people have your interest at heart with a true desire in helping you deal with diabetes.

What you can do for the onset of Diabetes:

In the following paragraphs I will point out the type of coping mechanisms that you will want to fall back on to help you manage your diabetes and give you suggestions how the people closest to you be more help and a support unit.

Before you start thinking it is a little lonely having diabetes let me inform you that you share disease with 346 million people worldwide that have vastly different backgrounds and a range of social economic, celebrity status and sporting backgrounds that are all doing the blood glucose monitoring exactly like you do.

Just some of the more well known people that have diabetes are:

• Halle Berry
• Billie Jean King
• Arthur Ash
• Nick Jonas
• King Fahd
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• Mary Tyler Moore
• Jackie Gleason
• Elizabeth Taylor
• Mae West

The whole point of why I mentioned others that share the disease is that diabetes shouldn’t stop anyone following their dreams in life as long as follow the simple diabetes guideline care.  By following the do’s and don’t of management of diabetes you will find that you will be healthier than someone who smokes, are overweight and who do no exercise.

Medical research is feverishly trying to find a cure for diabetes but unfortunately science is not that advanced that a single vaccination can be given to prevent the onset of diabetes but what has been discovered is that an analysis can be done on a DNA along with other tests and family history taken into consideration to pre determine which people will may be more susceptible to diabetes.

Diagnosis of Diabetes:

At the time when you or a family member are sitting in the doctor’s office and are just being informed that you have diabetes and suddenly the penny drops that you have a condition that you could die from.  The reaction to this news is similar to the person that has been told that they have an incurable disease and you then automatically go into denial.

Then all the lectures that your doctor gave you that you ignored or didn’t follow the advice has come back to haunt you.  The fact that you should of watched your diet more carefully, taken your medication and exercised when you were first informed  that you had a “little bit of diabetes” whereas now you have diabetes.

Hopefully now that you have been diagnosed that you have shared the results with family and friends as there is nothing to be ashamed of as the people who are closest to you can now help you by not having tempting foods displayed to so you are not to be tempted or the colleagues you work with who will need to know to give you glucagon or another type of sweet if you become unconscious.

Studies have shown that people with diabetes may experience depression along with anxiety at a rate higher than that of the general population.  You may feel deprived of the things you are no longer able to eat or you may be worried about either the long and short term complications that you have read about.  If you are feeling depressed and wondering how to beat this dark cloud first look at:

• Talking to your medical doctor
• Concentrate on eating better quality of foods as discussed with your dietician; this in turn will help give you better blood glucose levels which are the start to feeling better.
• Begin a regular exercise program

 Just doing these simple things can make a difference on how you feel and once you start feeling better it is amazing how everything else seems to fall in place and you are able to cope a lot better.

Symptoms of Type 1 Diabetes:

Frequent urination – The reason you experience this is because your kidneys are not able to return all of the glucose to your bloodstream when blood glucose level is greater than 10 mmol/L.  This large amount of glucose in your urine is very concentrated and water is drawn out of the blood and into the urine.  The combination of the glucose and water fill the bladder frequently.

• Increased thirst – Your thirst increases as you experience frequent urination, you lose so much water through urinating that you body can become dehydrated.
• Increased appetite – There is a chance that you may also feel increasingly hungry all the time.  Although your body has plenty of extra glucose in the blood but the reason your hungry is due to the cells becoming malnourished as you lack the insulin to allow the glucose to enter your cells.
• Weight loss – The reason why you are losing weight is your body is losing glucose in the urine and then your body is breaking down fat and muscle on it’s quest for energy.
• Weakness – You’re tired as your muscle and cells are not getting the energy they need from the glucose.

At one stage Type 1 diabetes used to be call juvenile onset diabetes as it mostly occurred most typically in children.  Today though, with so many more cases are now been discovered in adult’s doctors are reluctant to use the term juvenile any longer.

There are a few more symptoms and facts that are included below that you should be aware of and you may see in special circumstances in people with type 1 diabetes.

The honeymoon period – there could be a time after diagnosis of diabetes where the insulin levels decline for a period of 1-6 months and the disease looks as though it is a little bit milder.  The honeymoon period is longer for the older child at time of diagnosis.  The honeymoon period is always only temporary.

Fact: Males and females get type 1 to an equal degree.

What Causes Type 1 Diabetes?

After your doctor has handed down his diagnosis that you have type 1 diabetes you almost immediately begin to think ready to point a finger at whom else in my family has this disease? I will let you know that in 90% of the detected cases the patient will have no relation with type 1 diabetes, which is really very interesting.  Failing this information then you may ask was it something that I ate?

The answer is simple type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that means that your body reacts against itself and destroys namely the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas.  One of the tests that the doctors perform to find out if you have type 1 is by measuring proteins in the blood, called antibodies these antibodies are called islet cell antibodies.

Type 2 Diabetes

 Fatigue – with type 2 diabetes you are feeling tired as you are tired because your body isn’t getting the glucose fuel that it needs.  After producing plenty of insulin your body is resistant to it.

• Frequent urination and thirst – with the constant running to the bathroom to urinate more frequently than normal this has a dehydrating affect on your body and leaves you thirsty and this makes you urinate!
• Blurred vision – The lenses in your eyes swell then shrink as the blood glucose levels rises and falls giving you blurred vision at times.
• Skin lesions – That take longer to heal than normal.  Your white blood cells which aid the healing process don’t work correctly in the high glucose environment of you body when it has diabetes.  Untreated diabetes leaves your body more susceptible to infections.
• Genital Itching – high glucose could mean yeast infection which is accompanied by itching and the discomforted that only a yeast infection can give!
• Numbness in the feet or legs – if you are experiencing any numbness in these areas chances are that you have one of the long term complications of neuropathy.  Neuropathy takes around 5 years to show any of the symptoms of diabetes.
• Obesity – If you are overweight you are a considered a risk to contracting type 2 diabetes against someone another person who has maintained close to an their ideal weight.

At first glance there are some similarities between type 1 and type 2 diabetes such as high blood glucose levels.  However in many ways though they differ considerably which I will go through and now point out:

Age onset: Those diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic are usually younger than those diagnosed with type 2

• Body weight: People with type 1 diabetes are thin or normally weighted while typically obesity is often linked to type 2 diabetes
• Level of glucose: Type 1 diabetes has a high glucose levels at the onset of the disease.
• Severity of onset: With type 1 diabetes it has a much more severe onset, while on the other hand type 2 diabetes gradually shows its symptoms.

Prevention of Diabetes:

The good and the bad news is that you can prevent diabetes but not as quickly or as easily as you like might hope.  Firstly, you have to be able to identify individuals who are likely to be at high risk of contracting the disease. Next, the disease must have a least some treatments of actions that the individual can take to definitely reduce the onset of diabetes.

Type 1 Diabetes Management.

 Diabetes research is underway in order to predict onset of type 1 diabetes.  The focus currently is on gene research, and the diet of newborn babies and vaccination.  Along with this clinical study they are looking at preventing the destruction of beta cells, the cells in the pancreas that make the hormone insulin.  Also in the clinical testing phase and it is something that the scientists should be proud of is identifying the genes of those that are susceptible to diabetes.  Unfortunately, the prevention of type 1 is still many years away as the scientist are looking for ways to gene manipulation and this is still a long way off.

Currently there is no real treatment to prevent type 1 diabetes but being a type 1 is an excellent candidate for the prevention trials due to the long latent time before the disease becomes obvious.

Also on the radar is the investigation into the diet of newborns and whether there is a link of early introduction of cow’s milk in the diet of a newborn and whether there is an association with the development of type 1.  Studies are continuing looking closely at introduction of both cereals and gluten increases to the newborns diet and this is still under investigation.

Vaccination could be an example of prevention also but unfortunately the doctors are working feverishly to pinpoint the exact virus once this is identified then the vaccine will be able to be produced.

Type 2 Diabetes Management.

 Today type 2 diabetes is rising in epidemic proportions as the levels of obesity and inactivity rise so does type 2 diabetes.  Really according to the type 2 diabetes research there are only two significant lifestyle changes that need to be addressed and that is obesity and inactivity.  Also mentioning genetics who contribute strongly to both obesity and diabetes.

The evidence is right in front of our faces, type 2 diabetes can easily be delayed and possibly prevented.  All that is needed is at risk individuals that are prepared to  make their lifestyle changes along with undertake any necessary medications.

Now that you know about the onset of diabetes you will be able to use the information given to either help yourself or someone close to you that has diabetes.