What is diabetes?
Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes (insulin dependent diabetes) is a lifelong condition caused by lack of insulin. Insulin is a hormone - a substance of vital importance that is made by your body. Without insulin your body can't make proper use of the food you eat. This causes your blood glucose - or blood sugar as people with diabetes often call it - to rise too high.
What causes diabetes?
Type 1 diabetes develops when the body's natural defence system against viruses and bacteria starts to destroy the insulin-making cells in the pancreas. No one knows exactly what causes this to happen. We know that members of some families are more likely to get diabetes than others. We also know that some external influence must be present. How all these factors interact is not known.
Before you had diabetes
Before you had diabetes, your body automatically kept your blood sugar exactly at the right level. Here is how that worked. After a meal with a lot of carbohydrates, sugar is absorbed into the blood stream very quickly. The amount of sugar in your blood must not get too high or too low. Two hormones - insulin and glucagon - were produced in the pancreas - to ensure that the blood sugar was always well controlled no matter how much you had to eat and how much you exercised.
Blood sugar rises after eating
The blood sugar rises after eating. Before you had diabetes, insulin was released into your blood and flowed together with the sugar to your body's cells. Insulin acts like a key. It opens doors in the muscle cell walls, enabling sugar from your blood to get into the cell to produce energy. This lowers the blood sugar to its normal level again. Before you had diabetes, your blood sugar was lower than 7 mmol/l in the morning.
When you have diabetes
Insulin acts like a key. But now that you have diabetes, you can't produce enough of those keys to open the doors into your cells. When sugar can't get into your muscle and other cells to produce energy, you feel tired, and if the sugar can't get into the cells to be used, it builds up in the bloodstream. When you first got diabetes, your blood sugar level went high.
Sugar in the urine
Urine forms in the kidneys when the blood is filtered. Without enough insulin, the amount of sugar in your bloodstream rises to very high levels. When that happens, some sugar spills through the kidneys into the urine. The sugar that spills into the urine carries a lot of water along with it. That makes you very thirsty. You drink a lot and urinate frequently.
Ketones in the urine
Without enough insulin, your body can't use sugar, so it will try to burn fat for fuel. When your liver burns fat too quickly, it produces poisonous waste products called ketones. Ketones are dangerous because they make the blood acidic. When ketones reach your kidneys, some flow out in the urine together with sugar.
Ketoacidosis
If not treated with insulin, you'll develop a serious condition called ketoacidosis. You'll feel sick and probably get stomach aches and vomit. Your cheeks will flush and you may lose consciousness. This could lead to diabetic coma. It requires immediate treatment with insulin and fluid.
Now that you have diabetes
To keep your blood sugar under control, now that you have diabetes, YOU have to do what your body once did automatically. The goal is to mimic the insulin pattern you had before you got diabetes and to keep the blood sugar level as near normal as possible.
Diabetes treatment
You'll need insulin injections every day - probably twice or more. Healthy eating is important. Make sure you eat three proper meals and three snacks a day if instructed. Don't forget to exercise regularly. You'll also need to learn about diabetes, how to test your blood sugar and how to react appropriately to your blood sugar readings.
Long term complications
After years of living with diabetes, some people may develop certain characteristic problems with their eyes, kidneys, nerves and feet. Susceptibility to heart disease and high blood pressure is also increased. To help prevent these complications, it is important to keep your blood sugar as close as possible to the level of people without diabetes.
APP KOL/AC 22/2/07