Diabetes 5 Essay, Research Paper

Diabetes is a disorder of metabolism-the way in which your body converts the food you eat into energy. Most of the food you eat is broken down by digestive juices into chemicals, including a simple sugar called glucose. Glucose is your body’s main source of energy. After digestion, glucose passes into your bloodstream, where it is available for cells to take in and use or store for later use.

In order for your cells to take in glucose, a hormone called insulin must be present in your blood. Insulin acts as a “key” that unlocks “doors” on cell surfaces to allow glucose to enter the cells. Insulin is produced by special cells (called islet cells) in an organ called the pancreas, which is about 6 inches long and lies behind your stomach.

In healthy people, the pancreas automatically produces the right amount of insulin to enable glucose to enter cells. In people who have diabetes, cells do not respond to the effects of the insulin that the pancreas produces. If glucose cannot get inside cells, it builds up in the bloodstream. The buildup of glucose in the blood-sometimes referred to as high blood sugar or hyperglycemia (which means “too much glucose in the blood”)-is the hallmark of diabetes.

When the glucose level in your blood goes above a certain level, the excess glucose flows out from the kidneys (two organs that filter wastes from the bloodstream) into the urine. The glucose takes water with it, which causes you to urinate frequently and to become extremely thirsty. These two conditions-frequent urination and unusual thirst-are usually the first noticeable signs of diabetes. Another symptom you may notice is weight loss, which results from the loss of calories and water in your urine.

The path toward type 2 diabetes

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As you gain weight, the extra weight causes your cells to become resistant to the effects of insulin. The pancreas responds by producing more and more insulin, which eventually begins to build up in your blood. High levels of insulin in the blood-a condition called insulin resistance-may cause problems such as high blood pressure and harmful changes in the levels of different fats (cholesterol) in your blood. Insulin resistance, the hallmark of what doctors sometimes refer to as “syndrome X,” is the first step on the path to type 2 diabetes.

The second step to type 2 diabetes is a condition called impaired glucose tolerance. Impaired glucose tolerance occurs when your pancreas becomes exhausted and can no longer produce enough insulin to get glucose out of your bloodstream into cells. Glucose begins to build up in your blood. If it is not diagnosed and not treated, this gradual rise in glucose often leads to type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease-in any order and in any combination.

While all these harmful activities are going on inside your body, you feel perfectly fine. Type 2 diabetes is considered a silent disease because it works its destruction over many years without causing any noticeable symptoms. That’s why half of the people who have type 2 diabetes don’t know it. You or someone you love could have diabetes.

The good news is that you may be able to avoid type 2 diabetes altogether. This article will help you understand the disease, learn about your chances of developing it, and tell you what you can do to try to prevent it. Many people are able to avoid diabetes by making changes in their lifestyle such as eating less and exercising more.

Diabetes Statistics http://www.diabetesroadmap.com/

Over 15.7 million people (5.9% of the population) have diabetes and almost half of them do not know it. And, each day more than 2,200 people are diagnosed with diabetes.

Diabetes is responsible for more than 180,000 deaths each year in the USA.

Diabetes is one of the most costly health care problems in America. Health care costs directly related to diabetes treatment, as well as the cost of lost productivity, runs $98 billion annually! 14% of all health care costs are caused by diabetes and 27% of Medicare’s budget is spent treating seniors with diabetes. 40-45% of persons age 65 or older have Type 2 Diabetes or Impaired Glucose Tolerance.

Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in people 20-74; the leading cause of end-stage renal disease; and people with diabetes are 4 times more likely to have heart disease, 2-4 times more likely to suffer a stroke, and is responsible for over 56,000 amputations each year.

African, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans are 2 to 4 times more likely to have Type 2 Diabetes.

People with diabetes, especially the newly diagnosed, must make life style changes. It is traumatic for them, their spouse, family and friends.

For the first time, a comprehensive one-source video that shows people with Type 2 diabetes how to live with their disease and make necessary changes in their lifestyles. The viewer actually has virtual consultations with eight highly experienced doctors, a Certified Diabetes Educator/Diabetes Clinical Nurse Specialist and a Certified Diabetes Dietitian.

Diabetes is a serious lifelong medical condition that requires knowledge, support, motivation and a change in lifestyles. Self-management is the key to good diabetes care and this video teaches the viewer step by step how to make changes to live a longer and healthier life.

The 60-minute video is broken into 18 different diabetes topics with the intention of using it as reference when the viewer needs to refresh their memory. For instance, if the person with diabetes gets up one morning and is coming down with the flu, they put the VHS cassette in the player and fast forward to section 10, “Sick Day Guidelines”.

The video does not have actors, only professional medical people. There are no testimonials and the video does not promote any pharmaceutical company or any specific medications. The producers of the video are dedicated to updating this video at least twice a year so that it will always be current.

Medical host for this video, Dr. Douglas Walsh, is a family physician who implores the viewer to share the video with their spouse and family since heredity plays such a big role in diabetes. Walsh points out that African, Hispanic, Asian and Native born Americans stand a greater risk of having diabetes.

DIABETES Diabetes is a chronic illness but it is not fatal. A chronic illness is classified as an illness with no cure and has symptoms that persist over a long period of time. Diabetes is not a fatal illness, except in a few rare and severe cases. It is one of the most common chronic illnesses that a person can get. About 16 million Americans have diabetes and diabetes is most common in Hispanics and native Americans. About 5% (800,000) have type I which only occurs in young people. People with type I diabetes develop it between the ages of nine and thirty. Diabetes is a condition in which the body is unable to process sugars and starches (carbo s) into glucose, the bodies main source of energy. The disease develops when specific cells in the pancreas are unable to produce a hormone called insulin or when the body uses insulin in the wrong way. The beta cells in the pancreas produce insulin. Type I diabetes is insulin dependent. 10% of people who have diabetes has type I. This type is often called juvenile diabetes because it develops during childhood or adolescence. People with type I have to take insulin on a daily basis. The insulin is injected beneath the skin into the tissue. Without the insulin, the body will not be able to function correctly. Type II, also called adult onset diabetes, is the most common form of diabetes. About 80%-90% of Americans that have this chronic illness develops this type, and the majority of them develop this disease after the age of forty. In type II, the pancreas still develops insulin, but either the pancreas just doesn t produce enough of that specific hormone, or the body does not use it in an effective and efficient way. The doctors believe there are some things that might cause diabetes but no one actually knows what causes diabetes but these of course are educated guesses. They are viruses, autoimmune disorder, genetics, and stress. Some of the most common symptoms of stress are excessive thirst and hunger, excessive urination, exhaustion, and also flu and cold like symptoms. Diabetes can even cause other diseases because of the fluctuation of the glucose and some of those are neuropathy, cardiovascular disease, retinopathy, and nephropathy. The best treatments for diabetes are insulin injections, dieting, and exercise. Some of the confusing parts of diabetes are that there are three types of insulin and those are rapid or regular acting insulin, intermediate acting insulin, and long acting insulin. The insulin is measured in cubic centimeters and have three different strengths which are 40 cc, 80cc, and 100 cc. The way that you get insulin in your body is by injecting it. There are three different ways to inject which are jet injectors, insulin pens, and insulin pumps. So as you can see, diabetes is not a fatal disease but can be life threatening if not taken care of. Remember that if might not have diabetes now but you never know what the future holds.

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Diabetes 2

Some people have a disease that requires them to take daily injections of insulin. This disease is called diabetes, and cannot be cured. But, what if a non functioning pancreatic islet cells could be made to produce insulin once again. That would cure diabetes. The possibility has set the diabetes world excited over the past few months–ever since researchers at McGill University in Canada and the Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) successfully regenerated islet cells in diabetic hamsters. The researchers used a mixture of proteins called Ilotropin to “turn on” nonfunctional islet cells. The treatment also caused new islet cells to grow where there had been few or none. Since then, in a report in the May 1997 Journal of Clinical Investigations, the researchers have identified the gene that Ilotropin triggers, the one involved in regenerating the islet cells. If the human version of the same gene could be turned on in similar fashion, type I insulin dependent diabetics and type II’s who inject insulin might have their natural insulin-producing apparatus restored.

What is Diabetes? Well, this disease is known as “diabetes mellitus,” diabetes from the Greek word meaning excessive urination, a symptom the Greeks noticed, and mellitus, from the Latin for honey, which is because diabetic urine is filled with sugar and is sweet. Physicians and medical books use the term diabetes mellitus, but is the most commonly called diabetes. There are two major types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. Both of them are a little different. But everyone with diabetes has one thing in common: Little or no ability to move sugar–or glucose–out of their blood into their cells, where it is the body’s primary fuel. Everyone has glucose in their blood, whether or not they have diabetes. This glucose comes from food. When we eat, the digestive process breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, which is absorbed into the blood in the small intestine.

To get insulin into the blood, do you have to inject it with a needle? Yes, but hopefully not for too much longer. Two new studies show that an experimental new inhaled insulin is at least as effective as injected insulin. A no-injection method of insulin has been the most important study for diabetes research for some time, because it would make blood glucose control much easier. Insulin pills failed because acids in the stomach destroy the pill. Squirting insulin into the nose also proved no good because of dosing problems and nasal irritation. But scientists now seem to have hit on something that works, which is a fine powder inhaled by mouth into the lungs, where it can be absorbed into the blood stream. The hormone is administered with a flashlight-sized inhaler.

Does diabetes cause blindness? Sometimes is does, Compared with non-diabetics, people with diabetes are four times more likely to become blind. Among people who are legally blind, eight percent lost their vision because of diabetes. Each year, diabetes is the underlying cause of twelve percent of new blindness diagnoses. Among new diagnoses of type 2 diabetes, up to 21 percent show some degree of blindness. The most common type of eye disease that diabetics get is retinopathy. Retinopathy is caused by damage to the blood vessels that nourish the retinal nerves. Just as poorly controlled diabetes harms the major arteries, causing heart disease and stroke, the disease also takes a major toll on the tiny blood vessels in the retina. Diabetes also increase risk of cataracts, caused by clouding of the lens of the eye, and glaucoma, caused by an increase in fluid pressure within the eye that damages the optic nerve. In non-diabetic adults, less than 1 percent have glaucoma and 3 percent have cataracts. Among people with diabetes, the figures are 7 percent that have glaucoma and 22 percent have cataracts. These conditions cause much of the vision impairment in people diagnosed with diabetes over age 30 (type 2). Risk of both cataracts and glaucoma increases with age. These conditions are another reason diabetics should have annual eye exams. If cataracts become severe, the eye lens can be replaced with an artificial lens. If glaucoma develops, it can be treated with medications that reduce the fluid pressure in the eye.