Understanding Diabetes
Millions of people throughout the United States are affected by diabetes. It is considered to be one of the leading causes of death. But what exactly is it? What are the symptoms and how do we prevent it? The goal of this essay is for you to understand the answers to these questions, and be able to apply your newly gained knowledge to your own life, hopefully decreasing your risk of developing diabetes.
To understand what diabetes is, you must first have an understanding of the processes that your body goes through to maintain a healthy blood sugar level. After eating a meal glucose, or simple sugar, is released into you blood. Your blood sugar level rises, which alerts your pancreas to release a hormone called insulin. Insulin is what tells your cells to take the glucose and use it for either energy or convert it to glycogen. Glycogen is the stored form of glucose, which is later broken back down to glucose as your body needs energy. When the glucose is taken up by the cells for energy or converted into storage form, your blood sugar returns to a normal level called homeostasis.
Now that we have a general idea of how our body regulates sugar intake we can discuss exactly what diabetes is. It is a disease in which your body is unable to use glucose for energy, resulting in elevated blood glucose levels. There are a few different types of diabetes. In some cases, a person’s body does not make insulin at all. Thus, there is no insulin to tell your cells to use the glucose for energy. This is called type 1 diabetes, or it was previously known as juvenile diabetes. Only 5 to 10% of diabetes cases are diagnosed as type 1 (Grosvenor & Smolin, 93). It is usually discovered before a pers...
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...t is usually treatable, diabetes is a serious, scary disease. If it is not taken care of it can cause other serious complications such as heart disease, blindness, and kidney failure. Although the exact cause is unknown, you should realize that there are many things you can do to prevent yourself from developing diabetes. Diet and exercise is the key. Now it is time that you put your knowledge to use. Keep yourself healthy and at a lower risk of developing one of America’s leading causes of death.
Works Cited
“American Diabetes Association”. 14 Feb 2004
diabetes.jsp>
Grosvenor, Mary B. and Lori A. Smolin. Nutrition: Science & Applications. 4th Edition.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2003.
“National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse”. 15 Feb 2004
Diabetes is a disease that causes an abnormally high level of sugar, or glucose, to build up in the blood. Glucose comes from food we consume and also from our liver and muscles. Blood delivers glucose to all the cells in the body. In people without diabetes, the pancreas makes a chemical called insulin which is released into the blood stream. Insulin helps the glucose from the food get into cells. When the pancreas doesn’t make insulin, it can’t get into the cells and the insulin stays in the blood stream. The blood glucose level gets very high, causing the person to have type one diabetes.
During the year 1889, two researchers, Joseph Von Mering and Oskar Minkowski, discovered the disease that is known today as diabetes. Diabetes is a disease in which the insulin levels (a hormone produced in unique cells called the islets of Langerhans found in the pancreas) in the bloodstream are irregular and therefore affect the way the body uses sugars, as well as other nutrients. Up until the 1920’s, it was known that being diagnosed with diabetes was a death sentence which usually affected “children and adults under 30.” Those who were diagnosed were usually very hungry and thirsty, which are two of the symptoms associated with diabetes. However, no matter how much they ate, their bodies wouldn’t be able to use the nutrients due to the lack of insulin.
Sometimes diabetes is something that u cant control because it can be hereditary meaning if one of your family members had it then u have a possible chance of getting it. In some cases we
Diabetes is a disease in which a person’s body in unable to make or utilize insulin properly which affects blood sugar levels. Insulin is a hormone that is produced in the pancreas, which helps to regulate glucose (sugar) levels, break down carbohydrates and fats, and is essential to produce the body’s energy. The CDC (2013) offers reliable insight, summarized here, into the different types of diabetes, some causes, and health complications that may arise from the disease.
Diabetes is a disease that affects the body’s ability to produce or respond to insulin, a hormone that allows blood glucose (blood sugar) to enter the cells of the body and be used for energy. Diabetes falls into two main categories: type 1, or juvenile diabetes, which usually occurs during childhood or adolescence, and type 2, or adult-onset diabetes, the most common form of the disease, usually occurring after age 40. Type 1 results from the body’s immune system attacking the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The onset of juvenile diabetes is much higher in the winter than in the summer. This association has been repeatedly confirmed in diabetes research. Type 2 is characterized by “insulin resistance,” or an inability of the cells to use insulin, sometimes accompanied by a deficiency in insulin production. There is also sometimes a third type of diabetes considered. It is gestational diabetes, which occurs when the body is not able to properly use insulin during pregnancy. Type 2 diabetes encompasses nine out of 10 diabetic cases. Diabetes is the fifth-deadliest disease in the United States, and it has no cure. The total annual economic cost of diabetes in 2002 was estimated to be $132 billion, or one out of every 10 health care dollars spent in the United States. Diabetes risk factors can fall into three major categories: family history, obesity, and impaired glucose tolerance. Minority groups and elderly are at the greatest risk of developing diabetes.
All in all, my mother’s family who suffered from diabetes were considered to be obese. Although medications, exercise, or dieting will not for sure cure anyone, had they taken better precautions it is possible they may have lived a longer life. Being a genetic trait in my family I find it important to work out and watch what I eat so that I can avoid getting any types of diabetes. Make it your goal to be aware of what you are doing in your everyday life because you never knew if what you eat or do today will affect you tomorrow.
Diabetes also known as high blood sugar levels, develops when your body either cannot make enough insulin or can't properly use the insulin that it makes. Diabetes has been around since the 1500's. The ancient Chinese described the signs of diabetes as described as "large amounts of urine." (Beaser 2). It wasn't until the ancient Greeks who actually gave the name of diabetes, which meant "to flow through." (Beaser 2) Later the Latin's added the word mellitus, which means sweet urine. The medical term is now diabetes mellitus. To understand the multiple ways to treat diabetes, you first need to understand what diabetes is and how your body reacts to it. Everyone needs food to survive, without food you will starve to death. Once we put food into our mouth, our body breaks it down to be used for fuel by the cells within our body. This process is called metabolism. Food is f...
Glucose is a sugar that plays a big part in a human’s health and well-being. This sugar is a major source of energy for the body’s brain and cells. The Cells that receive energy from glucose help in the building of the body’s muscle and tissue. Although glucose may be important to the body too much of this sugar can cause a chronic condition called Diabetes. Diabetes, also known as Diabetes mellitus, is a chronic condition that is caused by too much sugar in the blood. This condition can affect all age groups. In fact, in 2010 a survey was taken by the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, on the number of newly diagnosed diabetes. Out of 1,907,000 people: 24.38% were ages 20-44, 55.17% were ages 45-64, and 20.45% were ages 65 and greater. Diabetes is a very serious condition, and it can be deadly if left untreated. This paper will help better educate the reader on the signs and symptoms, the testing process, and the management of diabetes.
When the blood glucose is higher than the normal levels, this is known as diabetes disease. The body turns the food we eat into glucose or sugar and use it for energy. The insulin is a hormone created by the pancreas to help the glucose get into the cells. The sugar builds up in the blood because either the body doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t well use its own insulin (CDC, 2015). In the United States diabetes is known as the seventh leading cause of death. There are different types of diabetes. However, there are two main types of diabetes and these are; Diabetes type 1 and Diabetes type 2 (CDC, 2015).
Although diabetes can be genetic, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re prone to get it. Controlling and checking your blood sugar helps to treat diabetes, as well as insulin therapy, regular check-ups/monitoring, and exercising. If you’re diabetic, you’ll find that at first, it’s frustrating and time consuming to treat for your diabetes. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.
Diabetes is a common disease, which can be a serious, life-long illness caused by high levels of glucose in the blood. This condition is when the body cannot produce insulin or lack of insulin production from the beta cells in the islet of Langerhans in the pancreas. Diabetes can cause other health problems over time. Eye, kidneys, and nerves can get damaged and chances of stroke are always high. Because of the serious complications, the purposes of teaching a plan for diabetes patients are to optimize blood glucose control, optimize quality of life, and prevent chronic and potentially life-threatening complications.
The first type of diabetes is Juvenile diabetes. Children who are diagnosed with this type one diabetes don’t have the ability of making insulin cells made in the pancreas. Your pancreas makes absolutely no insulin. The insulin lowers the level of glucose in the blood stream. It also is a hormone that converts the food we eat into valuable energy. The pancreas will release a certain amount insulin until the level of Homeostasis. Even though this type is found mostly in children, it can occur at any age. Early on, people thought Juvenile diabetes was two different types, one in kids and then one in adults. Now, we know there are no little differences, it is the same form. Current research shows that Juvenile diabetes is an auto-immune disorder. Type one accounts for about ten percent of all people with diabetes. To solve this problem, people have to take an injection of insulin to metabolize the glucose in your blood. The symptoms usually appear suddenly. The symptoms are: constant urination, extreme hunger or thirst, weight loss, weakness and tiredness. There are many different companies that support and give many thousands of dollars to foundations that want to stop this terrible disease. One example is JDRF’s Unite to Cure Juvenile Diabetes. This is a two-year national campaign to raise awareness of diabetes research.
RQ1 what is diabetes? Glucose is produced in the liver and insulin is produced in the pancreas, insulin helps the body break down the sugar in the blood stream. Insufficient insulin means the that the liver is producing masses amounts of sugar and the cells in the body are not absorbing it, insulin helps this process. There are two classifications of diabetes, type I diabetes is completely insulin dependent, this means that the pancreas does not make any insulin at all and the diabetic must take insulin injections to survive, type I diabetes is usually diagnosed early in life and is really uncommon, making up less than 0.5 of the world’s population. Type II diabetes is the second kind, this is where the pancreas is producing insulin but not quite enough to properly defend the body against the extra sugars. Between 90-95% of diabetics have type II diabetes. It is the most common but is usually diagnosed later in life. It is known as maturity onset diabetes.
In order to understand diabetes, it is important to understand how we normally metabolize food. Our bodies are composed of millions of cells, and in order to function, these cells must create energy. This energy comes from glucose. Glucose is mainly obtained from food.
“Diabetes mellitus (sometimes called "sugar diabetes") is a condition that occurs when the body can't use glucose (a type of sugar) normally. Glucose is the main source of energy for the body's cells. The levels of glucose in the blood are controlled by a hormone called insulin, which is made by the pancreas. Insulin helps glucose enter the cells” (Diabetes Mellitus).