Diabetes Essay, Research Paper

Each year 30,000 Americans are diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and over

13,000 or whom are children. That s 35 children every day. 16 million Americans

have diabetes and of these, 5.4 are undiagnosed. Diabetes kills one American

every three minutes. It afflicts 120 million people worldwide and a new case of

diabetes is diagnosed every 40 seconds. This number is estimated to skyrocket to

300 million by the year 2025. Diabetes does not discriminate and it can strike

anyone at any age and all ethnic populations. There is currently no known cure for

this disease.

Diabetes is a chronic, genetically determined, debilitating disease. There

are two major types of diabetes: Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 (juvenile) is caused

by the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and is

usually diagnosed in childhood. Basically, this means that your blood sugar is too

high. Your blood always has some sugar in it because the body needs sugar for

energy. But too much sugar in the blood is not good for you health. Your body

changes most of the food you eat into sugar. Your blood carries the sugar to your

body cells. The sugar needs insulin to get into the body cells. Insulin is a chemical

(a hormone) made in a part of the body called the pancreas. The pancreas releases

insulin into the blood. Insulin helps the sugar from food get into body cells. If your

body doesn’t make enough insulin or the insulin doesn’t work right, the sugar

cannot get into the cells. It stays in the blood. This makes your blood sugar level

high, causing you to have diabetes. One of the products that is of vital importance

in our bodies is glucose, a simple carbohydrate sugar which is needed by virtually

every part of our body as fuel to function. Insulin controls the amount of glucose

distributed to vital organs and also the muscles. In diabetics due to the lack of

insulin and therefore the control of glucose given to different body parts, they face

death if they don’t inject themselves with insulin daily. Since strict monitoring of

diabetes is needed for the control of the disease, little room is left for carelessness.

As a result diabetic patients are susceptible to many other diseases and serious

conditions if a proper course of treatment is not followed.

Some common symptoms of type I diabetes include: excessive thirst,

constant hunger, excessive urination, sudden weight loss for no reason, rapid, hard

breathing, sudden vision change or blurry vision, drowsiness or exhaustion, and a

fruity odor to breath.

If one s immediate relative (parent, brother, sister, son, daughter) has Type

1 diabetes, their risk of developing it is 10 to 20 times the risk of the general

population. The risk of a child of a parent with Type 1 diabetes is lower if is the

mother. If one child in a family has Type 1, their siblings have about a 1 in 10 risk

of developing it by age 50. Caucasians have a higher risk of Type 1 diabetes than

any other race.

People who have diabetes must take shots of insulin every day to stay alive.

Insulin is not a cure but merely life support.

Taking insulin does not prevent the development of complications.

Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, adult blindness, and nontraumatic

amputations. It is also the leading cause of nerve damage. It affects every organ

system. Life expectancy of people with diabetes average 15 years less than that of

people without diabetes. People with diabetes are two to four times more likely to

have a heart attack or stroke. Death rate among infants born to mothers with

diabetes is two to three times as high for women without the disease.

Blood Glucose Monitoring allows you to: identify trends in glucose

control, identify factors that may cause high or low glucose values, evaluate the

impact of food, activity or medications of your diabetes, identify where changes in

the treatment plan are needed, and decide what you need to do when you are sick.

The best times to check your blood glucose are before breakfast, before lunch,

before dinner, and before bedtime snack. sometimes it is helpful to check blood

glucose 1-2 hours after a meal to see how the effect of food on your glucose

levels. You should check your blood glucose more often that usual during:

periods of stress, illness, or injury, when you are pregnant, when low blood

glucose is suspected, when there are changes made in your treatment program,

when taking new medications, like steroids.