Diabetes

Diabetes, what is it? Diabetes is defined by Wikipedia “as a group of metabolic diseases in which a person has high blood sugar, either because the body does not produce enough insulin, or because cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced.” Diabetes is a chronic debilitating disease that affects over 8 percent of the American population, however, with diet, exercise and medication, it is controllable and patients can live a long meaningful life with type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is defined by Wikipedia as “formerly insulin dependent or juvenile diabetes is a form of diabetes mellitus that results from autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas”. Depending on the locus or combination of loci, it can be dominant, recessive, or somewhere in between as defined by Wikipedia. The risk of a child developing type 1 diabetes is about 10% if the father has it, about 10% if a sibling has it, about 4% if the mother has type 1 diabetes and was aged 25 or younger when the child was born, and about 1% if the mother was over 25 years old when the child was born. The symptoms of type 1 include: frequent urination, increased thirst, increased hunger, fatigue, and weight loss. Type 2 diabetes is defined as a metabolic disorder that is characterized by high blood glucose and the body is insulin resistance or insulin deficient. Causes of this type can be linked to many factors. Lack of sleep, age, obesity and diet are the main factors for getting type 2. The lack of exercise and poor diet greatly increase the risk of getting the disease. There are a number of medications and other health problems that can predispose to diabetes. Some of the medications include: glucocorticoids, thiazides, beta blockers, atypical antipsychotics, and statins. Other health problems that are associated with type 2 are Cushing’s syndrome, hyperthyroidism, pheochromocytoma, and certain cancers such as glucagonomas.