Thursday, November 02, 2006

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a group of diseases in which the body's glucose (sugar) level is too high as a result of a disturbance in the production or metabolism of insulin.

In type 1 diabetes, the body is unable to produce insulin. The pancreatic cells which produce insulin are destroyed by the body's immune system. The cause is unknown. Insulin is needed to help the body use glucose for energy. These patients have to take insulin to survive. This is usually diagnosed in children and adolescents. Unlike type 2 diabetes the prevalence of this form of diabetes has not been on the rise.

Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes. In these patients either too little insulin is produced or there is resistance to the effects of the insulin so that the insulin cannot be fully effecive. Although the cause is unknown, there are multiple risk factors that relate to the development of type 2 diabetes. These include a family history, age, a sedentary lifestyle and obesity. Modifying these risk factors has been shown to either prevent or slow down the progression of diabetes. Certain ethnicites such as Hispanics, African-Americans, American Indians, Alaska natives and South Asians are also at higher risk.

Gestational diabetes is a form of diabetes that occurs in some women during pregnancy. This may resolve after the pregnancy ends, but these women have a 20-50% risk of developing diabetes in the next 5-10 years.

Related links: Diabetes Tutorial. Unite for Diabetes. Sweet Resolution. Every 10 Seconds.
References: National Diabetes Fact Sheet. Diabetes Prevention Program.
Photo: courtesy of biomed.brown.edu.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

سلام. کاش به فارسی هم مینوشتید تا ما هم میتونیستیم استفاده کنیم

Dr. Taraneh Razavi said...

Dr. Majidi is helping me translate these blogs into Farsi, a temporary link is http://thankyoutoali.blogspot.com/
We are working on a better template.

Anonymous said...

Very good to read in a short time. I hope people learn much over it, because it´s an important illness and often you can prevent well, if you get informed in time.