Diabetes is a metabolic disease where the utilization and disposal of food is deranged.
Consider glucose, amino acids and fatty acids as simple fuels required to run our body. These fuels are derived from the digestion of foods that we eat.
In order to use all these fuels in the factory of our body cells, it is essential to have a hormone called insulin available in the blood stream.
This hormone is produced in a gland called pancreas, located in the abdomen. If we think of our body cells as a factory and the fuels as raw materials, the lack of insulin can be visualized as a lock-out factory.
Thus the fuels cannot be processed and get accumulated in the blood stream.
When glucose accumulates in large amounts and exceeds the level of 180 to 200 mg percent in the blood stream, it starts spilling over through the kidneys into the urine.
Diabetes is diagnosed because of elevated blood glucose and presence of glucose in the urine.
Types of diabetes:
- Type 1 diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes
- Type 2 diabetes or non-insulin-dependent diabetes
The most common form of diabetes is type 2 diabetes, accounting for 95% of diabetes cases in adults.
Type 2 diabetes also used to be called adult-onset diabetes, but with increasing obesity in kids, more teenagers are now developing type 2 diabetes.
Individual with type 2 diabetes can make their own insulin in the pancreas, but the insulin that is produced is not used as effectively by the body.
