Diabetes is becoming a very popular word used to describe the disease that affects more people than any other complication in adults in my age range. Too much sugar and processed foods are creating more complications.
My husband was diagnosed with this when he was first discovered to have Dementia. Along with it came heart issues, blood sugar elevation, and higher blood pressure. It was surprising to both of us because we have a relatively low-sugar diet, eat healthily, and grow our own vegetables. Here is some information that I’ve collected over the past six years. I will be displaying below some information you might find interesting.
Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder characterized by elevated blood glucose levels, resulting from inadequate insulin production, impaired insulin action in cells, or both.
In type 1 diabetes, also called insulin-dependent diabetes, the body produces antibodies that destroy the islet cells of the pancreas, the organ that produces insulin, leading to high blood glucose levels. Once the death of the islet cells occurs, the process is irreversible, and type 1 diabetics are forever dependent on insulin shots to make up for what the body cannot produce.
In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas does make enough insulin, but the cells in the body become resistant to it, and even with elevated insulin levels, glucose does not enter the cells adequately, resulting in elevated blood sugars that cause the same complications as type 1 diabetes. However, unlike type 1, type 2 may be reversed, and is attributed to unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as poor diet, lack of exercise, and obesity.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90% to 95% of all 29.1 million cases of diabetes in the United States; this equates to 1 in 10 adults age 20 to 64 and 1 in 4 seniors age 65 or older.
Prediabetes is the occurrence of insulin resistance and elevated glucose levels in the blood, but not enough to meet the criteria for a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. In 2012, 86 million people age 20 years or older were diagnosed with pre-diabetes, which is up from 79 million in 2010. If someone is prediabetic and continues with an unhealthy lifestyle, including diet and lack of exercise, eventually diabetes will occur.
Diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes
Diabetes is diagnosed by a doctor using a lab test called the Hemoglobin A1C (standardized diagnostic test) that measures average blood glucose levels and reports them as a percentage. A normal A1C is below 5.7%. Prediabetes is indicated in the range of 5.7% to 6.4% and a reading over 6.5% means a person has diabetes.
Health Complications
Type 2 diabetes has several serious health complications and risks for associated diseases, including kidney disease, heart disease and stroke, hypertension, eye disease, peripheral vascular disease, diabetic neuropathy, and premature death.
The numbers illustrate the seriousness of this disease:
- 50% of diabetics die of heart disease and stroke
- 71% of adults with diabetes also have hypertension
- 44% of all kidney failures in 2011 were the result of diabetes
- 60% of all non-traumatic amputations of lower limbs occur in people with diabetes due to nerve damage
According to the Centers for Disease Control, those with diabetes are two times more likely to die from any cause than those without diabetes. Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in the United States.