What Is Diabetes?
Diabetes is a disorder that affects the way your body uses food for energy. Normally, the sugar you take in is digested and broken down to a simple sugar, known as glucose. The glucose then circulates in your blood where it waits to enter cells to be used as fuel. Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, helps move the glucose into cells. A healthy pancreas adjusts the amount of insulin based on the level of glucose. But, if you have diabetes, this process breaks down, and blood sugar levels become too high.
There are two main types of full-blown diabetes. People with Type 1 diabetes are completely unable to produce insulin. People with Type 2 diabetes can produce insulin, but their cells don't respond to it. In either case, the glucose can't move into the cells and blood glucose levels can become high. Over time, these high glucose levels can cause serious complications.
What is the Causes of Diabetes
Since insulin is the principal hormone that regulates uptake of glucose into cells (primarily muscle and fat cells) from the blood, deficiency of insulin or its action plays a central role in all forms of diabetes.
Most of the carbohydrates in food are rapidly converted to glucose, the principal sugar in blood. Insulin is produced by beta cells in the pancreas in response to rising levels of glucose in the blood, as occurs after a meal. Insulin makes it possible for most body tissues to remove glucose from the blood for use as fuel, for conversion to other needed molecules, or for storage. Insulin is also the principal control signal for conversion of glucose (the basic sugar unit) to glycogen for storage in liver and muscle cells. Lowered insulin levels result in the reverse converson of glycogen to glucose when glucose levels fall — though only glucose so produced in the liver goes into the blood. Higher insulin levels increase many anabolic (building up) processes such as cell growth, cellular protein synthesis, and fat storage. Insulin is the principal signal in converting many of the bidirectional processes of metabolism from a catabolic to an anabolic direction.
If the amount of insulin available is insufficient, if cells respond poorly to the effects of insulin (insulin insensitivity or resistance), or if the insulin itself is defective, glucose is not handled properly by body cells (about 2/3 require it) nor stored appropriately in the liver and muscles. The net effect is persistent high levels of blood glucose, poor protein synthesis, and other metabolic derangements.
What are the types of diabetes?
The three main types of diabetes are
Types 1 Diabetes
Types 2 Diabetes
Gestational Diabetes
What is the Treatment of Diabetes
Treating diabetes requires keeping tight control of blood glucose levels, meaning they should be as close to normal as possible to avoid complications.
A major study called the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial showed that if hemoglobin A1c levels were kept as close to normal as possible, people with type 1 had significantly lower rates of complications such as eye, kidney and nerve problems. Hemoglobin A1c is a test that reflects average blood sugar throughout a two- to three-month period.
Insulin injections or an insulin pump are vital for keeping your child alive and healthy. If your child is young, you and your child's school nurse may need to do the injections and finger-stick tests.
Enough insulin should be given to cover the amount of food that your child consumes so that blood glucose levels remain close to normal at all times. Many factors, such as the person's size and timing of meals, affect the proper dosage of insulin.
To monitor diabetes, sugar levels need to be checked, sometimes as often as six times a day. Such tests are needed to make sure the person is getting the right amount of insulin because too little or too much can cause problems. Glucose monitoring involves taking a small sample of blood, usually from the fingertip (depending on the device used) and testing it for glucose levels.
Hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) can be caused by not taking enough insulin or by some illness like the flu.
Hypoglycemia (also called an insulin reaction) is when blood glucose is too low because of too much insulin, not enough food, eating late or not eating enough carbohydrates. Insulin and blood glucose are out of balance. Hypoglycemia can be a life-threatening situation.
Part of good control is keeping track of your blood glucose readings to help the doctor know how well the treatment plan is working.
Insulin
It's very important that your child's doctor give instructions on how much insulin to take with meals. It's also very important that meals and snacks be taken at regular intervals and that they be planned the same time each day. If your child's insulin peaks and your child does not eat, your child could get hypoglycemia.
Sugar
Eating a lot of sugary foods is not good. Candy, cake and other sweets should just be occasional treats. Doctors used to think people with diabetes should avoid sugar entirely because it would make blood sugar go up too fast. All carbohydrates affect blood sugar the same way. A potato and a brownie both contain carbohydrates and have the same affect on blood sugar. But a potato has more vitamins than a brownie. Talk with your doctor or dietitian about your child's diet and nutritional needs.