Diabetes

Diabetes is a medical condition of elevated blood glucose or sugar levels. There are different ways for a person to develop diabetes.

The meals we eat are broken down into more basic components that are necessary for the normal functions of the body and a principal one of these components is glucose. The body regulates or controls levels of glucose levels with insulin. The higher the glucose within the blood, such as occurs after a meal, the more insulin that is released into the blood to help decrease and control the glucose levels.

The body produces insulin in the pancreas. When the pancreas is damaged by disease, trauma, or is damaged because of a genetic alteration, there may be a problem with either the amount of insulin production or in the quality of insulin produced. The decrease in insulin production or in the ineffective quality of normal levels of insulin, can contribute to, and cause diabetes.

As long as the pancreas functions well, and can continue to produce and secrete insulin in response to the varying levels of sugar intake, there will be no problems with having elevated blood glucose levels and no diabetes.

This is why a healthy person does not die of a sugar overdose. The pancreas is able to keep up with the body’s ever changing insulin demands which controls and to keep glucose levels within normal range.

Type 1 diabetes, or insulin dependent diabetes. This is a form of diabetes that typically starts at an early age, such as in children and youth. This type of diabetes is almost always due to a genetic cause, which causes an insufficient amount of insulin production by the pancreas. There is some indication that perhaps a virus may contribute to this type of diabetes, but the end result is the same, not enough insulin produced by the pancreas. Patients need to administer daily insulin to keep glucose levels normal. Lately there has been better control and a more normalization of insulin levels with the use of implanted insulin pumps. An insulin pump is a device that is placed underneath the skin of a patient and is capable of measuring the fluctuating levels of glucose throughout the day and release appropriate amounts of insulin in response to these fluctuating levels, to try to keep glucose levels steady.

Type 2 diabetes also known as non insulin dependent diabetes, or adult onset diabetes, is the more common form of diabetes. This type of diabetes usually develops later on in life. Unlike type 1 which is mainly due to a genetic problem, the cause of the development of type 2, has several causes. Altered insulin production, either  an insulin of poor quality, or insulin produced in insufficient amounts have been the main causes for this type of diabetes. Currently we are seeing an epidemic of ever increasing numbers of new cases of diabetics, who develop the condition not because of insufficient amounts of insulin or poor quality insulin but rather because of resistance to the appropriate levels of insulin produced. This is what is happening to people who are overweight.  In 2009, insulin resistance, a preventable condition, is increasing as a main cause of the development of diabetes.

Obesity is the cause in the increased numbers of diabetics, not just in the United States but also in cultures that follow high caloric, high fat diets like that of Western countries.