Understanding Diabetes

We live in a world where everyone wants to blame someone else for their problems. Mankind had been trying to do that for all of recorded time. The story of Adam and Eve and the apple in the Garden of Eden sees Adam blame Eve, Eve blaming the serpent and the serpent not being left with a leg to stand on. Men and women have been blaming each other ever since. We are just falling into the same trap of refusing to take any responsibility.

Responsibility is a big word and takes a set of broad shoulders to bear. We look back on a number of high-profile failures in public life in the world in the past 20 or so years and more often than not we find that the attitude is "who can we blame?" It does not matter if it is someone in the church life, business or even in politics there are very few who will hold up their hand and accept the blame. Sometimes even in your own home, whether you are in the role of parent or child it is even harder to accept that you did something wrong, even if it was something small.

In the USA the blame game is at an all-time high with lawyers being called in to sue at the slightest provocation. You can read about it every day in the newspapers where the law is called in to decide who pays, when they get blamed. The trouble is that so many forget that the only winners in these cases are the lawyers themselves. If you disagree with my statement then in the next month take 5 or 6 high profile litigations in your city and find out the lawyers and where their offices are and then go and take a brief look at the luxurious offices these cases are funding.

Now we get a look at the blame for Diabetes. We need to know if we are a sufferer from this medical complaint, whose fault this is and then we can start to get our lives in perspective as we deal with this complaint.

The full name is Diabetes mellitus and very often it is called a disease, but personally I see it as a complaint. Here it is that someone has symptoms but there is no definable disease that doctors can find. The common name drops the mellitus and simply calls it Diabetes. You cannot catch Diabetes as you can the common cold or influenza or something more virulent like Bird flu, even if it is H5N1.

There are three main types of Diabetes. Type 1: Type 2 and gestational diabetes. We will take a brief look at all three. There are other less common types but there is very little agreement as to the definition and naming of these other types so we will leave them alone.

Let's look at who is to blame. Let's have no excuses, but we need to take the blame on our shoulders if that is where it should be. This book may not provide comfortable reading but will challenge our attitude of "always blame someone else". If you are not ready for some straight talking about Diabetes then give up reading now.

Chapter 1

Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 Diabetes normally comes to light in young children. In the long term it must be treated by use of insulin and it normally brings with it a life-long dependency on insulin without surgical intervention. The major characteristic is that the pancreas does not produce insulin, or not enough insulin. The problem arises when the body itself attacks the cells that would normally produce insulin within the pancreas. This is called an autoimmune response. The patients who suffer this are often of normal weight and size for their age and then this hits them. Type 1 diabetes used to be called juvenile diabetes as the vast majority of the sufferers were young, but adults can suffer the same reaction when the body's autoimmune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce the hormone called insulin.