Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. Glucose is your ultimate source of energy and comes from the food you consume.
A hormone made by the special cells in the pancreas called islets of Langerhans helps glucose from food get into your cells to be used for energy. Sometimes your body doesn’t produce enough anabolic hormone or doesn’t utilize hormone well. Hormone helps to control blood glucose level by signaling the liver and muscle and fat cells to take in glucose from the blood and utilize that glucose for energy. If the body has sufficient glucose, hormone signals the liver to take up glucose and store it as glycogen. The liver can store up to around 5% of its mass as glycogen. Some cells in the body can take glucose from the blood without hormone, but most cells do require hormone to be present.
Diabetes occurs when your body cannot make or effectively use its own hormone. Hormone serves as a “key” to open your cells, to allow the sugar (glucose) from the food you eat to enter. Hormone binds to its receptor on the cell and signals the Glut4 transporter to come and bind to the cell membrane and aids to carry glucose from the blood stream to the interior of the cells. However, the problem arises, when glucose stays in your blood stream and doesn’t reach your cells. High blood sugar level starts causing damage in different organs of the body. Problem associated with diabetes are stroke, kidney disease, eye problems, dental disease, nerve damage, foot problems. Diabetes also varies depending on your genetic makeup, family history, ethnicity, health and environmental factors.
Type 1 diabetes
In Type 1 diabetes, your body
does not make hormone. Your immune system attacks and destroys its
own pancreatic cells that make hormone. When body’s immune system attacks its
own cells, it is known as autoimmune disease. The Islet of Langerhans sense
glucose in the blood and produce the right amount of hormone to normalize blood
sugars. Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults,
although it can appear at any age. People with type 1 diabetes need to take synthetic hormone every day to stay alive. Type 1 diabetes, previously known as juvenile
diabetes, is the most severe form of the disease. About 5% of people who have
diabetes have type 1 diabetes, or hormone-dependent diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes
In type 2 diabetes, your body does not produce enough hormone or can't utilize hormone well. Type 2 diabetes can occur at any age, even during childhood. However, this type of diabetes occurs most often in middle-aged and older people. Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes. Type 2 diabetes mostly found in people with a family history of diabetes, or obsessed. Physical inactivity, race, and certain health problems such as high blood pressure also affect your chance of developing type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is most likely to charge if you are prediabetes or had gestational diabetes when you were pregnant.
Gestational diabetes
Gestational
diabetes develops in some women when they are pregnant. Most of the time,
this type of diabetes goes away after the birth of the baby. However, if you’ve
had gestational diabetes, you have a greater chance of developing type 2
diabetes later in life. Sometimes diabetes diagnosed during pregnancy is
actually type 2 diabetes.
Symptoms:-
> Increased thirst> Increased urination (bed-wetting may occur in children who have already been toilet trained)
> Rapid and unexplained weight loss
> Extreme hunger
> Extreme weakness or fatigue
> Unusual irritability
> Blurred vision
> Nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain
> Unpleasant breath odor
> Itchy skin
Complication Associated with Diabetes: -
- Heart Problem- When you are diabetic, you are at least twice at the risk of heart attack, stroke, heart pain, narrowing of the arteries.
- Neuropathy – High blood sugar level, slowly keep damaging the tiny nerves of the body, and that gives a tingling, pain, burning and numbness in toes, fingers and legs. Diabetes even damages the nerve of the internal organ and cause digestive problem, sexual problem, problem to sense when the urinary bladder is full.
- Nephropathy- One of the leading causes of the kidney failure, that may also require dialysis or kidney transfer at the last stage. Constant high blood sugar slowly damages the delicate filtering layer of the kidney.
- Eye Problem–Diabetes increases the risk of the serious eye problem like glaucoma or cataract. It also causes retinopathy, where the high blood sugar level damages the blood vessels of the retina and might cause blindness.
- Skin Problem- Diabetes increases the susceptibility to various kind of infection like bacterial and fungal infections
- Depression- In type 1 and type 2 diabetes, one of the common symptoms is Depression. The worst part is that it interferes with the diabetes management.
