Diabetes, also called diabetes mellitus, is a condition characterized by high levels of glucose(sugar) in the blood. People with diabetes may have some serious health complications, such as heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and low-extremity amputations.
According to CDC,
In order to understand how diabetes develops, you’ll have to know about what glucose and insulin are.
Glucose (blood sugar) is an important source of energy for the cells that make up your muscles and tissues. It’s also your brain’s main source of fuel.
Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas, an organ near the stomach. It helps glucose from food get into your cells to be used for energy.
When your body doesn’t produce enough insulin and/or doesn’t well use the insulin it produces, glucose will not be able to reach the cells and then stay in your blood. Thereupon, sugar levels rise in your bloodstream. In consequence, your body’s cells will be short of energy. Your eyes, kidneys, nerves or heart may be damaged because of high blood glucose levels. This is the development of diabetes.
There are three common types of diabetes: type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes
Although the exact cause of type 1 diabetes hasn’t been identified, it is known that your immune system attacks and destroys your insulin-producing cells in the pancreas if you have this type of diabetes. That means your body can’t make insulin for you. You must take insulin or other medications daily to compensate for insufficient amounts of insulin. Therefore, this type of diabetes is also referred to as insulin-dependent diabetes.
In addition, Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults, so it is previously called juvenile diabetes. But Type 1 diabetes actually can affect people at any age.
Type 2 diabetes
This type of diabetes is the most common one. If you develop Type 2 diabetes, that means your body doesn’t produce or use insulin well. It often occurs in middle-aged and older people. However, rate of developing Type 2 diabetes for adolescents and young adults keeps rising rapidly due to higher rates of obesity and physical inactivity which are believed to be risk factors.
Gestational diabetes
Some women may develop gestational diabetes when they are pregnant. During pregnancy, the placenta produces hormones to sustain your pregnancy. They make your cells more resistant to insulin, which may discourage glucose from entering your cells. This condition will lead to gestational diabetes. In most cases, this diabetes will disappear after the child is born. But if you have had gestational diabetes, you will be at a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life. What’s worse is that sometimes diabetes diagnosed during pregnancy is actually Type 2 diabetes.
Other types of diabetes
Compared with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, other types are less common. They include monogenic diabetes, an inherited form of diabetes, and cystic fibrosis-related diabetes.
In the United States, every 21 seconds someone is diagnosed with diabetes. Furthermore, about 7.2 million people with diabetes are currently undiagnosed. In most cases, people are diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, accounting for more than 90 percent of patients with diabetes. Among Americans aged 65 years or older, 25.2 percent have diabetes.
For Type 1 diabetes:
Type 1 diabetes can’t be prevented.
For Type 2 diabetes:
Type 2 diabetes are preventable by managing the risk factors.
For gestational diabetes:
What should be noted is that sugar itself won’t lead to diabetes, which simply means eating too much sugar won’t cause diabetes. However, eating too much sugar may lead to obesity, obesity is one of the risk factors of diabetes.
Symptoms of Type 1 diabetes:
Symptoms of Type 2 diabetes:
Since Type 2 diabetes develops slowly, it is possible that some people with high blood sugar don’t experience any symptom at all.
Symptoms of gestational diabetes:
Diabetes is diagnosed with fasting blood sugar tests or with A1C blood tests, also known as glycated hemoglobin tests, which don’t require fasting. A fasting test means that it should be performed after you haven’t eaten or drank for at least eight hours. Diabetes is diagnosed according to the following standard:
Normal: Less than 100 mg/dl
Pre-diabetes: 100-125 mg/dl
Diabetes: 126 mg/dl or higher
Normal: Less than 140 mg/dl
Pre-diabetes: 140-199 mg/dl
Diabetes: 200 mg/dl or higher
Normal: Less than 5.7%
Pre-diabetes: 5.7 – 6.4%
Diabetes: 6.5% or higher
A1C is reported in percentage, your health care provider may report your A1C test result as eAG, or “average glucose,” which directly correlates to your A1C.
Treatment option depends on what type of diabetes you have.
Treatment for Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes:
If you have diabetes, you should check and record your blood sugar as many as four times a day or more often when you’re taking insulin. Careful monitoring is the only way to make sure that your blood sugar level remains within your target range.
Besides, regular A1C testing may be recommended to measure your average blood sugar level for the past two to three months. This can indicate how well you have recovered after you carry out treatment plan. According to A1C level, you may need a change in your plan.
People with Type 1 diabetes and some people with Type 2 diabetes or gestational diabetes need insulin therapy. The available types of diabetes include rapid-acting insulin, long-acting insulin and intermediate options. And a mixture of these types may be prescribed based on your own conditions.
In addition, an insulin pump or a tubeless pump is also an available option now.
Other oral or injected medications may be prescribed as well. Some medications aim to stimulate your pancreas to produce and release more insulin, while others try to reduce production and release of glucose from your liver.
There are also medications that help block the action of stomach or intestinal enzymes that break down carbohydrates or make your tissues more sensitive to insulin. Metformin is usually the first choice for Type 2 diabetes.
A pancreas transplant may be an alternative for some people with Type 1 diabetes. After a successful transplant, there is no need for you to have insulin therapy. However, it may bring about serious risks, due to which, transplant is usually reserved for whose diabetes is out of control or those who also need a kidney transplant.
This type of surgery may be beneficial to people with type 2 diabetes who are obese and have a body mass index higher than 35. But it’s not a common surgery because its long-term risks and benefits are still unknown.
Treatment for gestational diabetes
In order to guarantee your baby is healthy and complications during delivery can be avoided, controlling your blood sugar level is essential. Treatment for women with gestational diabetes involves maintaining a healthy diet, exercising, and monitoring blood sugar. Sometimes using insulin or oral medications may be necessary.
Treatment for prediabetes
For people with prediabetes, a basic and also key treatment is to have a healthy lifestyle which can help lower your blood sugar level and thus prevent or delay diabetes. A healthy lifestyle includes maintaining healthy weight, exercising regularly and having a healthy diet.
Sometimes medications such as metformin (Glucophage, Glumetza, others) may be needed if you have a high risk of developing diabetes.
What’s more, medications to control cholesterol, such as statins, and high blood pressure medications may also be considerable in some cases. If you’re at high risk of cardiovascular disease, low-dose aspirin therapy to help prevent it is likely to be prescribed by your doctor.
Diabetes is a chronic disease that you can live with, but the complications developed from diabetes could be fatal.
Keyword: diabetes
Aug 5, 2019
Research has showed a natural superfood powerful in managing blood glucose, named Mankai.
Mankai is a high-protein aquatic plant strain of duckweed. Mankai grows in Israel and other countries in a closed environment and is highly environmentally sustainable. Duckweed has been consumed for hundreds of years in Southeast Asia as a vegetable.
The study made a comparison of a Mankai shake to a yogurt shake equivalent in carbohydrates, protein, lipids, and calories. Following two weeks of monitoring with glucose sensors, participants who drank the duckweed shake showed a much better response in morning fasting glucose levels, later peak time glucose levels, and faster glucose evacuation. The participants also felt more full.
The Mankai is rich in nutrition, with a nickname “vegetable meatball”, it’s rich in high-quality protein, polyphenols, mainly phenolic acids and flavonoids (including catechins), dietary fibers, minerals (including iron and zinc), vitamin A, vitamin B complex, and vitamin B12. The rich polyphenols makes it resistant to oxidation. It includes the complete protein profile of eggs.
Aug 5, 2019
Whole body vibration reduces inflammation in diabetes, said professors in Medical College of Georgia and Dental College of Georgia at Augusta University.
Whole body vibration means you stand, sit or lie on a machine with a vibrating platform. This is called a passive exercise. Is it as good as regular exercises? There has always been a dispute.
Today these professors show whole body vibration alters the microbiome, a collection of microorganisms in and on our body, which help protect us from invaders and, in the gut, help us digest food. After regular use of whole body vibration, they found increasing levels of a bacterium that makes short chain fatty acids, espeically they found 17-fold increase in this bacterium called Alistipes, known to be proficient at making short chain fatty acids which, in turn, are “very good” at decreasing inflammation in the gut. When Alistipes went up, glucose use and the macrophage mix also improved.
Although there’re more work to do, the investigators clearly say whole body vibration can turn down inflammation. It could be 10-15 minutes and five times a week.
Jul 31, 2019
Extracts of the herb Withania coagulans, or Paneer dodi, are used in traditional Indian medicine. Researchers now prove the herb’s effectiveness in reducing blood glucose levels in diabetic mice.
In the lab, diabetic mice fed for 5 days showed about 40% lower blood glucose levels compared to their starting amounts. Surprisingly, even 5 days after the treatment ended, the mice showed a 60% reduction in blood glucose compared to their starting levels.
Jul 20, 2019
University of California, Davis Health – A team of scientists and physicians have identified how diabetes lead to vascular disease.
Protein kinase A (PKA) is an enzyme which increases calcium channel activity and constricts blood vessels.
Cyclic AMP(cAMP) is a cellular messenger with a critical role in vascular cell function.
Adenylyl cyclase (AC) is an enzyme involved in cyclic AMP (cAMP) production.
The researchers found that AC5, a specific AC, mediated cAMP and PKA activation, triggering increased calcium channel activity and blood vessel narrowing.
The research team is planning further tests on AC5 chain reaction in high-glucose conditions in human cells. If this step confirms, AC5 will be a treatment target for reducing the vascular complications of diabetes. New drugs to surpress AC5 can be developed to interrupt the increase of calcium channel activity and blood vessel narrowing, and reduce the vascular complications, which can include eye, kidney, cerebral, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular disease.