Brief Look At What Is Diabetes?
When people ask, “What is diabetes?” they usually have are asking about one of three diabetes types that most people are familiar with. When a person takes a brief look at what is diabetes, they will find that these types of diabetes can be resolved with a change in lifestyle, while other require a life time of insulin medication or shots.
In the United States, about 5-10% of children and young adults are found to have Type 1 diabetes yearly. It is the result of an auto-immune disease. When the immune system attacks the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas and kills them, the pancreas can not produce insulin. This results in no insulin being produced for the body.
The symptoms of Type 1 diabetes occur very rapidly. A person will suffer from extreme thirst, hunger, weight loss, fatigue, blurred vision, and frequent urination. If no treatment is administered a person can go into a diabetic coma (diabetic ketoacidosis). Type 1 diabetes is extremely serious and can be life-threatening if not treated.
Type 2 diabetes occurs in over 95% of adults over 35 in the US according to the Natl. Inst. Of Health. Eighty percent of the people who have Type 2 diabetes are overweight. A person with Type 2 diabetes does not get the insulin they need because their cells become resistant to it.
Type 2 diabetes is triggered by obesity, lack of exercise, some ethnicity’s, a person’s age and, in some cases, genetics. Other triggers for this type of diabetes are high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Unhealthy eating habits are the greatest cause for Type 2 diabetes. When a person has a lifestyle that does not include proper diet and exercise, they are extremely susceptible to Type 2 diabetes.
When an individual develops Type 2 diabetes the symptoms will occur gradually over a long period of time. They will have fatigue, increased thirty, hunger, slow healing of wounds and sores, blurred vision, and frequent urination.
Changing one’s lifestyle with proper diet and exercise often resolve Type 2 diabetes. Most people who resolve their Type 2 diabetes in this way do not need further medical intervention. But, some cases of Type 2 diabetes are not resolved even with a change in lifestyle and medication is required.
Gestational diabetes occurs in three to eight percent of women in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy and disappears after the delivery of the baby. In most cases these women will be instructed on proper diet and exercise to keep the diabetes under control during pregnancy.
Most women who have gestational diabetes with a baby, will continue to develop the condition each time they get pregnant. There is about a forty percent risk that they will develop Type 2 diabetes later in life.
Outlook: Some diabetes statistics.