Do you know someone who has diabetes? Perhaps you have it yourself. There are a few different kinds of diabetes. Some strike when a person is young, and other forms make their presence know when a person is older. Some forms are temporary, such as gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes affects pregnant women and usually goes away after the baby is born.
Have you ever heard of adult onset diabetes? It is also known as Type 2 diabetes. This means that the person who has it is not born with is, like a person with Type 1 diabetes. They are usually affected starting in childhood, and so Type 1 diabetes is also referred to as Juvenile Onset Diabetes. But for the millions of people who live in America with Type 2 (or Adult Onset) diabetes, the health changes begin in adulthood.
The changes are small at first. In a healthy person, the pancreas makes insulin, and insulin is used during digestion to break down food. Each and every cell inside your body, no matter what it does or what purpose it serves, needs sugar to perform its duties and functions. IN a healthy person, they eat food and insulin is the substance which allows sugar to enter the cell. If the cell were a room with a locked door, you could consider insulin to be a key which unlocks the door and allows the sugar inside.
Before a person develops Type 2 diabetes, they first transition from typical health to insulin resistance. This condition is where the body begins to resist using the insulin as the key to open the locked door of the cell. It would be if you tried to open a locked door with a rusted key. It would take more effort to get the key to work. Later, once insulin resistance has fully set in, it would be as if you were trying to open a locked door using the wrong key entirely. It would not work, and that is what happens in the body as well. Once insulin resistance has set in, the body will be unable to use insulin at all, and so the cells will be in a state of constant need of sugar. This means that the person with insulin resistance is now considered a Type 2 diabetic.
Since their cells are unable to access and make use of the much needed sugar, the excess sugar simply accumulates in the person’s blood. This is why a diabetic person is able to measure the level of sugar in their body by testing their blood. The kidneys work hard to process out the excess sugar, but until they are successful, the sugar floats around in the blood and causes irritation and inflammation within the blood vessels. The kidneys can also suffer strain from having their workload increased so much. The person with diabetes will produce larger quantities of urine as the kidneys try to get rid of the extra sugar. Furthermore, the person will feel hungry and thirsty more often, and sometimes even when they’ve just ate. They may not ever feel satisfied, and this goes down to a cellular level, where each cell is still in desperate need of sugar.
Diabetes can be incredibly complex and you need a good doctor to help you manage this chronic condition. Has it been a while since your last appointment? Call today.