Diabetes – What Kind of Diabetes Do You Have?

By editor | July 5, 2007

Diabetes is not a single disease with a single cause. Rather, it is a collection of diseases, some more difficult to control than others. All forms of diabetes involve a hormone (body regulator) from the pancreas called insulin. If you have diabetes, either you lack insulin or the insulin you have is not doing its job properly. The result is that instead of being stored for energy through the action of insulin, the foods you eat (primarily the starches or carbohydrates) raise your blood sugar to higher than normal levels. Without treatment, your blood sugar remains high and has the potential of adversely affecting every organ and system in your body. With treatment, the insulin problem can be solved, and your blood sugar can be brought down or normalized so that the body is not damaged. A person with diabetes can thus remain healthy and look forward to a normal life span.

A Bit of History

Information written on ancient Egyptian papyrus described diabetes as a disease that caused a person to melt into the loins and the result, ing urine to attract ants (because of the sugar content). The name itself indicates the loss of valuable body fluids: diabetes is from a Greek word, meaning “to siphon.” Mellitus, a Latin word, relates to a word meaning “honey” or “sweet tasting.” Yes, due to the high sugar content and the lack of earlier testing methodologies, actually tast, ing the urine did give an indication that the person had sugar diabetes. In fact, Mother Nature was fooling the disease’s early observers, who saw the crystalline content of the urine after its liquid contents had evaporated. In the fourteenth century, this was actually thought to be a salt (people were not into taste, testing at that time, we suppose).

Diabetes mellitus was treated, over time, by various means aimed at lowering the sugar content in the urine or decreasing the loss of fluid. Some patients fasted and feasted on alternating days, weeks, or months. Others were taught to eat rancid meat or vegetables cooked three times in their own water. Others survived on eggs or cereal. The association of food and fluid was passed down through time. Eventually, the discovery was made that the hormone insulin, secreted by cells called beta cells in the islets of Langerhans, needed to be replaced in the body in order for normal blood,glucose levels to be achieved.

Many people contributed to the knowledge about monitoring blood,glucose levels. Insulin could not be analyzed or its significant content noted until the 1960s. We learned that other hormones, such as glucagon, might help cause the disease. We also learned that diabetes is not the result of a single event in the body but of several events that lead to a series of immune responses, with the end result being that the majority of insulin,making cells (beta cells, found in the islets of Langerhans) are no longer working.

With the discovery of insulin, many people believed that dia, betes had been cured. The medical community soon discovered that if the person lived longer, and especially when the blood,glucose levels were not significantly controlled or normalized the majority of the time, complications occurred (for example, blindness, heart disease, or the need for amputation). Many of these complications can now be prevented through present knowledge of this process or through getting to the doctor in time. Eyes (retinopathy) are being stabilized and vision returned (a risk reduction of 76 percent). In one case, a young man had 350/20 vision in the right eye, 400/20 in the left eye, a detached retina in the left eye, cataract development in both eyes, and cloudy fluid in the eyes due to past hemorrhages.

With the lasering of the total retina surface, a procedure that reattached the retina to the back surface of the eye, replacement of the eye fluid, and lens removal and implant of a new lens, the eyes changed to 30/20 in the left eye and 40/20 in the right eye. Amputation, a procedure most associated with diabetes in its earlier days, can be prevented in an increasing number of cases (risk reduction of nerve disease or neuropathy: 60 percent). Other problems associated with other parts of the body ( Le., risk of kidney disease or nephropathy: 56 percent) are reversed earlier or treated with trans, plantation, something unheard of twenty,five or more years ago.

Education of the diabetes patient is one of the major keys to attaining such high degrees of control. Since health professionals cannot be with the person and his or her family on a day,in, day,out basis, self, management education is a must. Demand it.


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