What is Diabetes

Diabetes mellitus which most common diabetes is derived from a Greek word diabetes which means siphon or pass through urine and mellitus means honeyed or sugar. In general, condition of high level of glucose or sugar in the blood.

Diabetes is one of the most common diseases these days. Be it children, young adults and elderly, people from any age group can be affected by this health condition.

But, if you know what is diabetes, it can be easier for you to manage your health along with this disease. There is no permanent cure and treatment for diabetes, but it can be easily managed with medication and certain change in lifestyle.

So What Actually Is Diabetes

Diabetes is a disease which occurs when your blood glucose level or blood sugar is too high. What makes blood sugar go high? Is it because of the food you eat or hormonal changes. Blood glucose or sugar is the main source of energy in our body. It comes from the food we eat.

Eating a lot of sugar and sweets does not cause diabetes. But diabetes begins when your body is not able to convert the sugar or glucose into energy because of low or no insulin produced in your body.

Insulin

Insulin is a hormone which is produced in our pancreas. This hormone helps in taking the glucose into the cells, which gets converted into energy. Diabetes is a condition which happens when there is less or no insulin in your body.

The glucose that we get from the food get into the cells to be converted as energy. This process is helped by a hormone called insulin. There is various insulin related treatments for diabetics depending on the type of diabetes.

Symptoms of Diabetes

There are various symptoms of diabetes through which you can know that you are suffering with this health condition. Some of the symptoms of diabetes are: frequent urination, always feeling hungry, increased thirst, feeling tired all the time, blurred vision, slow healing of cuts and wounds, numbness, pain or tingling in the hand or feet, dark patchy skin, itching and yeast infection.

Effects of High Blood Sugar

Having high blood glucose or sugar for longer duration can cause health problems in your body from head to toe. You can get following complications if your blood sugar remains high for long duration.

Heart disease or Heart attack
Kidney damage
Nerve damage
Eye damage
Skin problems

Do you know? According to a report, the actual number of diabetic patients in India is 40 million. This means that India is in the list of top 10 countries with highest number of diabetes patients in the world.

Types of Diabetes

From the above information you must have understood what diabetes is and its effects. There are different types of diabetes:

Type 1 diabetes – In type 1 diabetes, pancreas make no insulin at all in the body. This happens because of the of auto immune condition in which body’s immune system attacks the cells in pancreas which makes insulin. People with this type of diabetes need to take insulin every day to stay alive. Usually children and young adults are diagnosed with this type of diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes – Type 2 is the most common type of diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, body is doesn’t produce sufficient insulin or unable to manage it. People can get this diabetes type of diabetes at any age.
Gestational diabetes – Pregnant women are diagnosed with gestational diabetes. This type of diabetes go away after baby is born.

In the next blog, you will get to know about how to treat diabetes.

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