What is diabetes? What causes diabetes?

Diabetes (diabetes mellitus) is classed as a metabolism disorder. Metabolism refers to the way our bodies use digested food for energy and growth. Most of what we eat is broken down into glucose. Glucose, a form of sugar produced when starches and sugars are digested, is burned as fuel to supply the body with energy. This process - turning food into energy - is called metabolism.

Simply put, diabetes is a serious disease that impairs the body's ability to use food properly.

When our food is digested the glucose makes its way into our bloodstream. Our cells use the glucose for energy and growth. However, glucose cannot enter our cells without insulin being present - insulin makes it possible for our cells to take in the glucose.

Insulin is a hormone that is produced by the pancreas. After eating, the pancreas automatically releases an adequate quantity of insulin to move the glucose present in our blood into the cells, and lowers the blood sugar level.

Trying to burn glucose without insulin is like trying to cook food without heat. It can't be done. And that's the problem for people with diabetes: they either don't produce enough insulin to properly metabolize glucose, or the insulin they have works inefficiently.

Without insulin to turn glucose into energy the glucose piles up in the bloodstream and spills into the urine. Excessively high levels of sugar in the blood and the urine are the hallmarks of untreated diabetes.

A person with diabetes has a condition in which the quantity of glucose in the blood is too elevated (hyperglycemia). This is because the body either does not produce enough insulin, produces no insulin, or has cells that do not respond properly to the insulin the pancreas produces. This results in too much glucose building up in the blood. This excess blood glucose eventually passes out of the body in urine. So, even though the blood has plenty of glucose, the cells are not getting it for their essential energy and growth requirements.

Throughout history, diabetes has been a leading cause of death by disease. Today, even with the availability of insulin, it is estimated that approximately one-half million North Americans die as a result of diabetes and its complications like heart and kidney disease, stroke, blindness and amputation each year. Diabetes is a disease that touches millions in one way or another, whether it's those with the disease, friends or family members who are suffering the implications.

The main goal of diabetes treatment is to control blood sugar levels and keep them in the normal range to avoid the complications such as heart and kidney disease, stroke, blindness and amputation. The specific kind of treatment used to control blood sugars depends on the type of diabetes a person has.

What are the different types of diabetes?

Type 1 (insulin-dependent or juvenile)
Type 1 diabetes (juvenile diabetes) can occur at any age, but most commonly is diagnosed from infancy to the late 30s.  In this type of diabetes, a person’s pancreas produces little or no insulin.  Although the causes are not entirely known, scientists believe the body’s own defense system (the immune system) attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.  People with type 1 diabetes must inject insulin several times every day.

Type 2 (non-insulin-dependent or adult-onset)
Type 2 diabetes typically develops after age 40, but can appear earlier, and has more recently begun to appear with more frequency in children.  In this form of diabetes the pancreas still produces insulin, but the body does not produce enough or is not able to use it effectively.  Treatment includes diet control, exercise, self-monitoring of blood glucose and, in some cases, oral drugs or insulin.

Gestational Diabetes
About 2 to 5 percent of pregnant women develop high blood sugar during pregnancy.  Although this type of diabetes usually disappears after the birth of the baby, women who have had gestational diabetes are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.

(World Health Organization)

Diabetes Types 1 & 2 are chronic medical conditions - this means that they are persistent and perpetual. Gestational Diabetes usually resolves itself after the birth of the child.

Why is it called Diabetes Mellitus?

Diabetes comes from Greek, and it means a siphon. Aretus the Cappadocian, a Greek physician during the second century A.D., named the condition diabainein. He described patients who were passing too much water (polyuria) - like a siphon. The word became "diabetes" from the English adoption of the Medieval Latin diabetes.

In 1675 Thomas Willis added mellitus to the term, although it is commonly referred to simply as diabetes. Mel in Latin means honey; the urine and blood of people with diabetes has excess glucose, and glucose is sweet like honey. Diabetes mellitus could literally mean "siphoning off sweet water".

In ancient China people observed that ants would be attracted to some people's urine, because it was sweet. The term "Sweet Urine Disease" was coined.

Treatment is effective and important

All types of diabetes are treatable, but Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes last a lifetime; there is no known cure. The patient receives regular insulin, which became medically available in 1921. The treatment for a patient with Type 1 is mainly injected insulin, plus some dietary and exercise adherence.

Patients with Type 2 are usually treated with tablets, exercise and a special diet, but sometimes insulin injections are also required.

If diabetes is not adequately controlled the patient has a significantly higher risk of developing complications, such as hypoglycemia, ketoacidosis, and nonketotic hypersosmolar coma. Longer term complications could be cardiovascular disease, retinal damage, chronic kidney failure, nerve damage, poor healing of wounds, gangrene on the feet which may lead to amputation, and erectile dysfunction.

DIABETES STATISTICS: In the USA - 2007

17.9m people are diagnosed with diabetes
5.7m people are undiagnosed with diabetes
57m people have pre-diabetes
186,300 (0.22%) people under 20 have diabetes
1 in every 400 to 600 under 20-year olds have Type 1 diabetes
2m adolescents have pre-diabetes
23.5m (10.7%) of those over 20 have diabetes
12.2m of those over 60 have diabetes
12m men (11.2%) have diabetes
11.5m women (10.2%) have diabetes

By American Diabetes Association