Shannon Ashley
HS200 Section #4
Unit 4 Capstone Project: Diabetes
Kaplan University
May 12, 2014
The first steps in understanding your diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes is understanding the disease and how it affects you. What do you need to know? First, you will need to know what diabetes is and how it affects your body and your life. You will need to know what type of diabetes you have. Next you have to know how to manage your health, treat your diabetes, know when your treatment is successful and what to do when it’s not.
Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is autoimmune disease in which there are high levels of sugar (glucose) in the blood. T1D is usually diagnosed in children and young adults but can be diagnosed in adults and also known as juvenile diabetes. Only 5% of people with diabetes have type 1.
Type 1 Diabetes is a chronic condition where the body doesn’t produce the insulin it needs. The pancreas either produces to little or none at all. Insulin is a hormone needed by cells to allow glucose (sugar) to enter them to produce energy. Insulin is how we get energy from the food we eat. When the pancreas doesn’t produce the insulin our body needs the sugar builds up in the bloodstream and it can lead to life threatening complications.
The population of people that have Diabetes in the United States is 25.8 million children and adults. 8.3% of population has been diagnosed with a form of Diabetes. The Greeks described diabetes as the disease that causes the body to melt into sugar water.
The cause of the disease has not been fully determined. It is an autoimmune disease in which the immune systems by mistake attacks the beta cells that produce insulin. Therefore the body can’t make its own insulin and the body has too much glucose in the blood and raises the blood sugar to high which is known as Type 1 Diabetes. Whatever causes Type 1 Diabetes, its deleterious effects can be