Diabetes means your blood glucose, or blood sugar, is too high. With Type 1 diabetes, your pancreas does not make insulin. Insulin is a hormone that helps glucose get into your cells to give them energy. Without insulin, too much glucose stays in your blood. Over time, high blood glucose can lead to serious problems with your heart, eyes, kidneys, nerves, and gums and teeth.
There are two main types of diabetes: juvenile-onset and mature-onset. Juvenile diabetes can affect anyone of any age, but is more common in people under 30 years and tends to develop in childhood, hence its name. Other names for juvenile diabetes include diabetes and insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM).
Normally, the pancreas produces the right amount of insulin to accommodate the quantity of sugar. However, if the person has diabetes either the pancreas produces little or no insulin, or the cells do not respond normally to the insulin. Sugar builds up in the blood, overflows into the urine and passes from the body unused. Diabetes can be associated with major complications involving many organs including the heart, eyes, kidneys, and nerves, especially if the blood sugar is poorly controlled over the years.
Diabetes is a chronic metabolic condition caused by the body's inability to break down glucose (sugars) and store them properly. When an individual's system is unable to efficiently process glucose, it will back up in the person's bloodstream creating multiple health problems.
Over thirty thousand individuals will be diagnosed with diabetes this year alone. It is estimated that over one hundred and twenty million individuals worldwide have diabetes. It is further estimated that approximately five million individuals have diabetes that has yet to be diagnosed. Two types of diabetes exist.
Diabetes is a lifelong disease for which there is not yet a cure.
There are several forms of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is often called juvenile or insulin-dependent diabetes. In this type of diabetes, cells of the pancreas produce little or no insulin, the hormone that allows glucose to enter body cells.
Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children and young adults, and was previously known as juvenile diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce insulin. Insulin is a hormone that is needed to convert sugar (glucose), starches and other food into energy needed for daily life. Finding out you have diabetes is scary. But don't panic. Type 1 diabetes is serious, but people with diabetes can live long, healthy, happy lives.
Without enough insulin, glucose builds up in the bloodstream instead of going into the cells. The body is unable to use this glucose for energy despite high levels in the bloodstream. This leads to increased hunger. In addition, the high levels of glucose in the blood cause the patient to urinate more, which in turn causes excessive thirst. Within 5 to 10 years, the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas are completely destroyed and the body can not longer produce insulin.
Most people are first diagnosed with Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes during the teen years. Although this is a time when fitting in with your friends can be important, "don't think you're different because of it," Ryan says. More than 400,000 new cases are reported in children and adults up to age 24 in the United States each year. And more than 1 million Americans currently live with the condition.
What Is Juvenile Diabetes
So, juvenile diabetes is another term for diabetes mellitus type I (as it typically strikes before the age of thirty). The other form of diabetes mellitus, type II or adult onset diabetes, is so named because it tends to occur in people over forty. (The age ranges are not hard-and-fast rules, they're descriptions of the majority.) They are differentiating between the two types of diabetes, not just separating out children with the disease. Research on the two forms of diabetes is very thoroughly separate, because the mechanisms of the two diseases are quite different, although the end result is basically the same.
Because of the political clout wielded by the older folks in North America, much of the funding for just plain "diabetes research" goes to type II research, even though it is much less of a killer and dangerous than type I. (I know that as I have both forms of diabetes occurring on both sides of my family, among very close by blood relatives, and father of my best friend died of long-term complications from juvenile diabetes, so it's a particular raw nerve of mine.)
Classic symptoms of diabetes include extreme thirst and excessive urination (Like every hour or even more often). In addition the patient may feel "run down" (run over by a semi is sometimes more like it) and display sudden mood swings. The patient will be always hungry.
In addition, if you need to know for sure if your condition is type 1 or type II diabetes, then there is another test that can be run to check for insulin production. However if the patient is young and thin this test would likely not yield much useful information as the treatments are very similar.
Both james sameul & Valerian D are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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