Diabetes - Medex

Diabetes is a long-term illness that affects 30 million Americans and 422 million people around the world. It’s a condition characterized by the body’s inability to effectively convert food into energy. As a result, you have too much (and sometimes too little) sugar in your bloodstream. This condition not only deprives you of needed energy, but also puts you at risk for other serious damage.

Two Kinds of Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes normally first appears in childhood when the body can’t produce insulin. Insulin is the chemical that allows cells to use sugar in your bloodstream for energy. Symptoms of type 1 diabetes typically come on quickly and severely.

Type 2 diabetes is much more common. It tends to be detected when you’re in your 30s or older. In this case, your body may not produce quite enough insulin, or the insulin it produces may not work effectively enough to allow your cells to be fed by blood sugar. This type usually of diabetes develops very slowly, over years.

Risk Factors and Warning Signs

In both kinds of diabetes, your cells don’t get enough sugar, but at the same time, there’s also too much sugar, or glucose, floating around in your bloodstream. It’s unable to enter your cells. If you live in this state, it eventually results in many problems, such as:

Chronic fatigue
Nerve damage
Kidney failure
Heart attack
Stroke
Decreased blood flow

Early detection and treatment are essential for both types of diabetes. Early detection and diabetes management make a big difference in how the condition affects you. The symptoms for both are almost the same, and usually they include:

Being tired all the time
Unexplained, extreme hunger
Weight loss
Blurred vision
Irritability
Weakness
Increased urination

Diabetes type 2 typically comes on more slowly. It gives you a chance to begin a critical prevention plan. With sufficient changes, you’ll stop type 2 diabetes and even reverse the symptoms.

Prevention Is Possible

Detection is normally just a matter of a simple blood test and a conversation with your physician. Your primary care doctor, in consultation doctor who may be treating underlying conditions, recommends simple plans for putting preventive steps in place that may include:

Losing weight
Reducing the amount of sugar you consume
Developing a healthier diet
Creating a safe exercise program
Quitting smoking

A Healthy Diet Changes Make a Big Difference

Since the main issue with diabetes or prediabetes tends to be the amount of sugar in your blood, your diet plays a big role in maintaining blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates of all kinds get converted into sugar in the bloodstream, so even foods like bagels or pizza spike your blood sugar. The goal isn’t to eliminate carbs, though; it’s just to reduce and balance them with other elements, such as fiber.

Complex carbohydrates, such as whole grain bread, make for healthier choices. In general, the more refined or processed the carbs are — think white bread or powdered sugar — the worse they are for your body. You receive tips from your diabetes prevention team about how to shop, such as:

Don’t shop on an empty stomach
Avoid the middle aisles where highly processed foods are displayed
Get your carbs from vegetables and high fiber foods
Diabetes care

If you already have type 1 diabetes, you need to be given insulin since your body is unable to produce it. For type 2 diabetes, you may still need insulin, but you may get other medications that help your body to use the insulin it has more effectively. You may also need medication to control the high blood pressure that’s often a side effect by diabetes.