About Diabetes
- Diabetes: The Silent Pandemic
- What is diabetes?
- Role of Insulin
- Symptoms of Diabetes
- Risk Factors of Diabetes
- Type 1 Diabetes
- Type 2 Diabetes
- Gestational Diabetes
- Managing Your Diabetes
- How is diabetes treated?
- Acknowledgements
Diabetes: The Silent Pandemic
Diabetes is a silent killer that is quickly growing into a world-wide health care pandemic. More the 240 millon people suffer from the disease world-wide, and one individual dies from diabetes-related causes every ten seconds.
Even with the availability of insulin, more and 40,000 Canadians, and half a million North Americans, die every year from diabetes or its related complications of heart and kidney disease, stroke, blindness, and limb amputation.
Diabetes is a disease that touches millions of people in one way or another, whether it's those with the disease itself, friends or family members, caregivers, employers, or community members.
What is diabetes?
Simply put, diabetes mellitus is a serious disease that impairs the body's ability to use food properly as a source of essential nutrition and energy.
Normally, glucose, a form of sugar produced when starches and
sugars are digested, is burned as fuel to supply the body with energy. This process - turning food into energy - is called metabolism.
But in order to metabolize glucose properly, the body requires another substance: insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced by beta cells which are part of the islets in the pancreas, a gland located just beneath the stomach.
The role of insulin is to regulate the body's use of glucose. Insulin is essential to the metabolic process.
Role of Insulin
Trying to burn glucose without insulin is like trying to cook food without heat. It can't be done.
And that's the problem for people who have diabetes: they either don't produce enough insulin to properly metabolize glucose, or the insulin they have works inefficiently.
Without insulin to turn glucose into energy the glucose piles up in the bloodstream and spills into the urine. Excessively high levels of sugar in the blood and the urine are the hallmarks of untreated diabetes.
The main goal of diabetes treatment is to control blood sugar levels and keep them in the normal range to avoid the complications such as heart and kidney disease, stroke, blindness, and limb amputation. The specific kind of treatment used to control blood sugars depends on the type of diabetes a person has.
Symptoms of Diabetes
The signs and symptoms of diabetes include the following:
- Unusual thirst
- Frequent urination
- Weight change (gain or loss)
- Extreme fatigue or lack of energy
- Blurred vision
- Frequent or recurring infections
- Cuts and bruises that are slow to heal
- Tingling or numbness in the hands or feet
- Trouble getting or maintaining an erection
Risk Factors of Diabetes
Once you are over the age of forty, your risk of diabetes increases and you should consider being tested every three years. If any of the following risk factors apply, you should be tested earlier and more often:
Being:
- A member of a high risk group (Aboriginal, Hispanic, Asian, South Asian, or African descent)
- Overweight (especially if you carry most of your weight around your middle)
Having:
- A parent, brother or sister with diabetes
- Health complications associated with diabetes
- Given birth to a baby that weighed more than 4 kg (9lbs)
- Had gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy)
- Impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glucose
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol or other fats in the blood
Being diagnosed with any of the following conditions:
- Polysystic ovary syndrome
- Acanthosis nigricans (dark patches of skin)
- Schizophrenia
Type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent or juvenile diabetes)
Type 1 diabetes (insulin dependent or juvenile diabetes) can occur at any age, but is most commonly diagnosed from infancy to the late 30s. In this type of diabetes, a person's pancreas produces little or no insulin. Approximately 10 percent of diabetics have type 1 diabetes.
Although the causes are not entirely known, scientists believe the body's own defense system, the immune system, attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. People with type 1 diabetes must inject insulin several times every day in order to control their blood sugar levels.
Type 2 diabetes (non-insulin-dependent or adult-onset diabetes)
Type 2 diabetes (non-insulin dependent or adult onset diabetes) typically develops after age 40, but can appear earlier, and has more recently begun to appear with more frequency in children. Approximately 90 percent of diabetics have type 2 diabetes.
In this form of diabetes the pancreas still produces insulin, but the body does not produce enough insulin or is not able to use it effectively. Treatment includes diet control, exercise, self-monitoring of blood glucose and, in some cases, oral drugs or injected insulin.
Gestational diabetes
About 2 to 5 percent of pregnant women develop high blood sugar levels during pregnancy. This form of the disease is called gestational diabetes and prompt diagnosis is important because children born to mothers with gestational diabetes may be "macrosomic," a medical term meaning severely obese.
Macrosomic babies have a higher risk of hypoglycemia after birth-a dangerously low blood glucose level-as well as severe breathing problems. They are also at higher risk for potential long-term obesity and glucose intolerance. Although this type of diabetes usually disappears after the birth of the baby, women who have had gestational diabetes are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.
Managing Your Diabetes
Effectively managing your diabetes will often involve a number of the following commitments:
- Stop smoking
- Check blood glucose levels and keep them in your target range
- Keep your cholesterol and other blood fats in your target range
- Maintain a health weight
- Maintain your blood pressure close to target level
- Take your medication as prescribed
- Manage your stress effectively
- Follow a balanced meal plan
- Be physically active
- Take care of your feet
- Regularly visit your dentist, eye care specialist, and doctor
How is diabetes treated?
People with diabetes can live active, independent and vital lives if they make a lifelong commitment to careful diabetes management, which includes the following:
- Education
- Diabetes education is an important first step. All people with diabetes need to be informed about their condition.
- Physical activity
- Regular physical activity helps your body lower blood glucose levels, promotes weight loss, reduces stress and enhances fitness.
- Nutrition
- What, when and how much you eat all play an important role in regulating blood glucose levels.
- Weight management
- Maintaining a healthy weight is especially important in the management of type 2 diabetes.
- Medication
- Type 1 diabetes is always treated with insulin. Type 2 diabetes is managed through physical activity and meal planning and may require medications and/or insulin to assist your body in making or using insulin more effectively.
- Lifestyle management
- Learning to reduce stress levels in day-to-day life can help people with diabetes better manage their disease.
- Blood pressure
- High blood pressure can lead to eye disease, heart disease, stroke and kidney disease. People with diabetes should try to maintain a blood pressure level at or below 130/80.
Acknowledgements
This information on diabetes has been compiled from the Alberta Diabetes Foundation, the Canadian Diabetes Association, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
