What comes in your mind at the very first time when you hear a word diabetes? Do you think about serious health problem, sugar excess, bad effects or alternative and possible treatment? Well anyway, no matter what kind of things you have in your mind about diabetes, you may not know that diabetes is not as simple as you may assume, particularly about the types. Generally, people only know much about one type of it, which is diabetes type II, and do not even know a thing about other types one. Whereas, the threat of those types is not different and could be harmful as well.
For not letting yourself know incomplete thing about diabetes which is considered having a significant increasing number of case recently, this writing would explore those types in detail explanation. Surely, the more you know about diabetes, the more you would be able to prevent and manage its bad impacts. Information on diabetes is a sort of thing you have to know because this disease gets more popular day by day. November 14th is even considered as the world’s diabetes day as this disease really threatens people and its number gets increasing time by time. In Indonesia, for example, there are about 8.5 million diabetes patients at 2013 and the number increases more and more. It is even mentioned that it suffers about 10% of people in the country.
Following is the information you need to pay attention on diabetes so you could know how to prevent as well as how to manage this popular disease. Simply keep reading on to the final part and make sure you do not miss a thing.
Brief Introduction on Diabetes
People like to relate diabetes or melitus diabetes with sugar disease and this makes very good sense as they both closely relate each other. Diabetes is a condition in which the body contains too much blood sugar or blood glucose level. As everyone may know, body gets energy from food supply—in addition to the energy from liver and muscle—and the main element of energy source is the glucose coming from sugar. In spite of it, it could not be mentioned that the more sugar consumed, the more energy could be got or the healthier a body would be since the body should also release the glucose to the the body cell through the blood stream.
This means that the glucose coming from sugar still needs other ‘thing’ to work properly and as what is supposed to. Without support and proper work of the thing, glucose would be very harmful. The thing we are talking here is a cell called insulin. Insulin works in releasing glucose to the body cells through the bloodstream. Without insulin, or when insulin does not work properly, glucose would remain as glucose and not transforming itself as an energy source. Even, it would be harmful since it would stay up at the bloodstream and disturb the regular ‘traffic’ of body metabolism (Read : Symptoms of Insulin Resistance).
Insulin itself is auto-produced inside a pancreas, an organ between the stomach and spine. When the body could not properly produce and or provide the insulin, the release could not be done so the sugar supply would not transform into an energy source and reach all details of body cell. As a consequence, it would stay up at the blood becoming sugar blood with high volume or above normal level. The excess of sugar blood or blood glucose level is called hypoglycemia. When this happens, the bloodstream would contain some blocks or obstacle preventing the blood to distribute oxygen and food supply to entire part of body, in addition to the less energy source supply.
What makes diabetes dangerous is actually about its long term effect. Diabetes is firstly about sugar problem, yet eventually, it turns into a common cause of complicated disease ranging from blindness, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure into leg, foot or other limb amputation. Why it becomes so harmful is because diabetes blocks the line of blood or bloodstream serving as channel to distribute bloodstream to all parts of body. When the bloodstream does not run smooth, blood would not be able to reach all details of body and this would make body organs not work well or even damaged. Therefore, it would be good for everyone to routinely control blood sugar level to conduct any care and treatment as early as possible before further bad things found.
Another bad consequences of diabetes is the problem of mental health. It is found that more than 30% of diabetes patients suffer mental problem ranging from, anxiety, depression even frustration. It makes a big sense then why governments campaign about diabetes awareness and do much effort to minimize the case rate of this dangerous and serious disease.
A common treatment of diabetes, no matter what type it is, is the control of sugar blood. Surely, this could be done directly through health meal plans by reducing sugar essences at the menu. The information about sugar essence in each type of food or food materials is also important to know so the patient could stay away to consume high sugar contained foods and look for possible alternatives. Additionally, regular check-up and re-management of lifestyle are also well needed.
As mentioned before, diabetes is not that simple because it has, at least, three main big categories, which are diabetes I, diabetes II and gestational diabetes. All of them need care and treatment but they could also be observed as early as possible to prevent any worse consequences. One main more thing to know about diabetes is that it is not discriminate people since everyone could suffer it, although those with heredity factor have bigger possibility.
Below is the explanation about three types of diabetes including the common cause, symptoms and possible treatment to do. Make sure you give your very much attention on it;
1. Diabetes Type 1
Diabetes type 1 is usually found at children and young adults. That is why, this type is also popular as juvenile diabetes. Compared to type 2, this is less popular and the major reason on it is because of the small number of people with this health problem.
It is said that only about 5-15% of diabetes patients have this type of diabetes. However, it does not mean that this health problem could be ignored and unconsidered because this type usually suffers children and young adults who, on the other hand, are fragile on several types of disease. This mainly relates to their less knowledge about health particularly those relating to diabetes such as sugar blood level, certain type of food and healthy life style to choose and the likes.
- Cause(s)
Diabetes type I takes control when the body, particularly the pancreas, does not (and could not) produce insulin. As mentioned before, insulin is a name of hormone or cell used by a body to release glucose into body cells. Pancreas could not produce insulin anymore since the body immune system mistakenly fights against and kills the beta cells inside the pancreas.
The cells work mainly in producing insulin cell inside the body or the pancreas. As a consequence, when this condition takes place, there is very low or even none of insulin could be released into the body. Automatically, the body could not absorb sugar supply from food, the sugar would stay in the blood and could not turn into energy source. Based on this description, you could assume that this type of diabetes happens because of body wrong procedure.
Unfortunately, the cause of type I diabetes is not yet known because it deals with body auto-reaction or particularly auto-immune reaction. However, it is suggested that it closely relates to the family hereditary. This implies that if your parents or grand parents have diabetes, you have higher risk to suffer the disease as well. Other scientists believe that it is a matter of virus which prompts the immune system and lead it to attack pancreas.
- Symptom(s). To help you identify this disease early, you could pay attention to these following symptoms;
- Excessive thirst and urination.
- Urination usually takes place at evening
- The decrease of muscle mass
- Easily getting hungry
- Slowly recovered cuts or wounds
- Weakness and fatigue
- Blurred vision
- Cramp on legs and pins or numbness at the feet
- Unusual Skin infection such as dryness and itchiness
- Headaches and dizziness
- Unexplained weight loss
If you find one or some of those symptoms on you or your family, you may have to check the blood sugar level soon to the closest laboratory in order to conduct needed treatment when it is needed. To distinguish the symptoms and other usual—and less dangerous—health problems, you can rely on two indication. Firstly is about unusual intensity or level and secondly is the sudden condition. Type I diabetes syndromes usually come straight away in high intensity. Patient usually find the symptom as extraordinary new things they never got it before and it comes in high level suddenly.
- Treatment
It is commonly known and believed that diabetes could not be healed. Patients and doctors could only be able to minimize or delay its bad effects especially about complication of disease because of diabetes. However, it is always important to know the body condition as soon as possible particularly when it has a bad health problem. It is always advisable, therefore, to have regular medical check-up at least once in six months.
If you already have certain diagnosis on type I diabetes, you could, as you may imagine, do treatment of this diabetes type by increasing insulin level supply for your body. As your body could not automatically produce insulin anymore, you have to find it from outside from pills, tablets and the likes. Other possible alternatives are by insulin injection or insulin pump. Additionally, since it is a DAILY need, at the very first days of treatment, it is advised to control the sugar level as often as possible to know how well the treatment work for your body. Meanwhile, the supplementary treatment is usually conducted by managing meal menus to manage sugar level and keep the blood sugar level at the right condition.
In other words, in treating diabetes, patients are required to do action from various sides. In one hand, they inject insulin to their bodies so that any sugar supply would be released into body cells as the energy source. On the other hand, they also limit the consumption of sugar so the insulin supply they got (from outside) could be used as efficient as possible.
Treatment for diabetes patient is extremely important since in the absence of insulin, the body would replace insulin with fat as the energy source. If this condition gets worse and remains the same, the bad impact is not only extreme weight loss—because of the loss of sugar—, but also about accumulation of chemical substances at the bloodstream—so called ketoacidosis—which could cause comma even threaten life. As you could imagine, it would be not only sugar staying up at the bloodstream, but also other dangerous chemicals.
Insulin supply for treating and managing type I diabetes is extremely important and in some cases, it has to be continuously practiced. This aims to keep the glucose level safe, which is between 80-120 mg/dl, 4-6 mmol/l). When this treatment is conducted in right procedure, it would not disturb daily activities so patients could still do their activities as usual. Without insulin supply, this type could lead to some bad effects ranging from comma to the death.
Other types of treatment to take is by being physically active and routinely making visits to doctors for checking cholesterol and blood levels which closely relates to the diabetes. Being physically active would led your bloodstream run smoothly and your body metabolism work properly. Slow but sure, it would be helpful in ‘cleaning’ your bloodstream from any unexpected materials including unused sugar.
Meanwhile, thorough and regular advice from doctor would help you assuring that your body gets treatment and action it deserves to.
- Prevention
Unfortunately, this type of diabetes could not be directly prevented. It could be found in any child or young adult randomly as the mistakenly autoimmune ‘action’ killing beta cells at the pancreas does not relate to anything. However recently, researchers have been trying hard to observe the characteristics of autoimmune process in relation to environmental factor. This means that in the future, we could wish that the prevention on type I diabetes could be identified.
Some believe that type I diabetes does not have any relation to lifestyle. However, some also believe that healthy life style really helps the body to make every organ, tissues and cells work well and properly. If the healthy life style could be maintained and well kept continuously, the mistaken action of cells would be possibly prevented because the cells would do on how and what it is supposed to do when its ‘surrounding’ does the same.
2. Diabetes Type 2
Among other types, diabetes type II is the most popular one. Its other—or previous–names are called adult-onset and non-insulin-dependent diabetes. It is mentioned that about 85% to 90% of diabetes cases all over the world is from the II type so it makes good sense why people tend to relate diabetes to its type II only. It is also type II diabetes which the case number increases so fast and far faster compared to other types.
People generally assume that this disease only suffers patients with age 45 years or above and this accords to what happen in most cases. Today, however, the number of type II diabetes patients from earlier ages, including children, is increasing, particularly for those with genetic hereditary, specific ethnic background or sedentary life without doing much physical exercise.
This information could be very beneficial for you to lower diabetes risk, such as by doing more physical exercises or maintaining extra treatment if you have genetic or ethnic hereditary. Long Term Effects of Type 2 Diabetes in the body will make your vital organs did not works properly.
- Cause(s)
In addition to genetic hereditary, patients may increase type II diabetes risk due to unhealthy lifestyle, overweight, or improperly treated existing diseases or health problems such as blood pressure, overweight or obesity, poor or bad diet, deficiency of physical activity or extra ‘fat’ at the waist area. The problem of age also closely relates to the risk booster of type II diabetes, approximately above 45 years. This implies that if you have on of those things in your body, it would be better for you stay more alert to diabetes by doing possible treatment or making regular visits to your trusted doctor. It is also found that overweight takes about 90% in the sense of diabetes risk booster. It makes big sense, therefore, when it is said that type II diabetes is one of main consequences of obesity.
If you pay attention to the causes or factors which could increase diabetes risk, you could infer and conclude that each of them influence and closely relate one another. For instance, overweight closely relates to the healthy diet menu and regular physical exercise. If you could maintain healthy eating habits combined with regular exercise, you could lose the weight and avoid away obesity problem. At opposite, if you do not care on what and how you eat your meals, you would gain weight more and more, particularly if you do not have physical activity as your habits.
The triggering diseases mentioned above also relates much to the healthy life style, both from their first appearance at your body and the treatment. This all means that if you make yourself accustomed to healthy life style, at least by managing your meal menus and doing adequate exercise, you would find no much problem on your health, including diabetes. That is why, experts suggest that type II diabetes closely connects to lifestyle.
Whereas technically, there are main factors causing type II diabetes.
1. The first (and the firstly happening phase) factor is about the resistance condition of a body to the normal effect of insulin.
This means that in certain level, the insulin could not work well in the body (particularly at muscle, liver cells and fat) to release glucose to body cells. This condition is called insulin resistance since the body could not ‘use’ it properly to succeed the release process. As you could imagine, there is nothing which release the glucose into body cells so it would stay up in the bloodstream and disturb the body metabolism particularly distribution of oxygen and food supply.
2. The second one, which is the long term impact of the previous, when it is not well treated, is inability of body, or particularly pancreas, to produce (adequate) insulin anymore.
This is slightly same as the type I diabetes yet you may take a note that in type I diabetes cause, the inability is not a long-term effect of the ‘problem’ of body dealing with insulin, meanwhile, for the II type, it is. Inability to produce adequate insulin is firstly triggered by too much production of insulin as the response of pancreas on the insulin resistance. The production aims to reach certain degree of insulin for good management of blood glucose levels.
However, because the body could not proceed it as what it is supposed to, the insulin keeps unused and the pancreas becomes too ‘tired’ to produce any insulin anymore as it had done extra work automatically. There would be a turning from insulin resistance to insulin deficiency and when this happens, the condition could get worse.
3. One other main thing to take a note about type II diabetes is its characteristic as progressive disease.
This means that when anyone is diagnosed as type II diabetes patient, it may likely happen that she/he had the diabetes since long time before it is identified. It is even often mentioned that when someone is diagnosed as type II diabetes patient, he/she had already lost about 50-70% of beta cells in pancreas which produce insulin. People also like to relate to symptoms of type II diabetes, although they are not always obviously seen, as aging symptoms, so that they tend to ignore them and believe that the symptoms are actually aging effects instead of ‘alarm’ of serious disease. The ignorance would then give bad effects as the condition gets worse without any treatment.
- Symptom (s)
Into some extent, type II diabetes is different from the previous type, particularly in the sense of symptom. In the type I diabetes, symptoms are usually clear, suddenly coming and emerging in high intensity or level. Meanwhile for type II, most of patients do not find the symptom before the condition gets worse and he/she is diagnosed as diabetes patient. Some of them even do not have any symptom at all. In most of cases, symptoms are clear in adulthood although the disease had fought the body long time before. Type II diabetes patients usually do not experience low blood sugar level episode (hypoglycemia) as what found in type I and this makes the awareness of diabetes sign more difficult outside medical laboratory.
Another clear and obvious symptom of type II diabetes is what is called by pre-diabetes. This condition happens when the blood sugar increases into some degrees higher than the normal range. However, it is still in safe condition or not surpassing the dangerous maximum limit and therefore not yet considered as diabetes. This condition could only be clearly identified by medical or laboratory check-up so it would be good for you have regular laboratory check-up to make sure you give proper and early treatment for your current body condition.
For some cases of few patients, various symptoms are found whether they are in still in less-dangerous condition or when they are already at complicated diabetes effects. Those symptoms are not too much different from type I diabetes ranging from too thirsty, too much urination, too tired, more and more hunger, skin problem, vision problems, mood swing, head problem as well as leg or foot cramps. The main different between type I and II diabetes is about the weight.
Type I diabetes patients would tend to loose weight as their fat replace the role of insulin in releasing glucose to body cells. When the fat ‘does’ the work outside its regular works, it would affect on body metabolism as well as the weight. At opposite, type II diabetes patients would gain the weight as the food supply could not be well distributed to parts of body and staying up at the wrong place. Paying attention to this difference, you could be more alert when you have sudden or loss weight because it could be a diabetes symptom. Be sure to check your glucose blood as soon as you could do.
- Treatment
It is commonly known that after diagnosis on diabetes, patients would be required to do various treatments to either prevent or minimize the bad effects. The stage or stadium of diabetes would greatly influence on the type of treatment. If the level is still low, the treatment would be about changing life style, keeping the body weight normal, planning the healthy meal menus or doing physical activities. However in some condition, patients would need to regularly consume tablets and insulin contained foods, hospitalized even insulin injection or pumps. This ‘high level’ treatment particularly works for preventing further complication because of diabetes.
Other possible kinds of treatment to do are minimizing diabetes risk boosters, such as sedentary life, bad diet and overweight. Therefore, type II diabetes patients usually try hard to cope with those problems and rid away from their body and or daily lives. If they have overweight body, for example, they would try to loose the weight by having good diets or add physical activities. When they tend to have less physical activities, they would find a way to have physical activities more such as going to gym, doing physical exercise, biking and others. The same condition applies for those with old age. They would be advised to maintain and keep healthy life style and avoiding away any bad lifestyle such as drinking alcohol, smoking and so on and so forth.
- Prevention
According to the causes and the risk booster of type II diabetes, medical experts assume that this type of diabetes could be prevented by at least three things. The first one is about keeping the body weight at the proper level and the second one is maintaining a healthy life style, particularly about eating habit and menu plan. Meanwhile, the third one is being physically active daily. This applies more for those who have genetic or ethnic heredity of diabetes.
Those three things could be applied by these following things
- Having routine and proper exercise
- Quit smoking
- Managing and combining healthy meal menus
- Controlling and managing blood pressure regularly
- Keeping the body weight in proper size
- Consuming healthy food menus
- Managing cholesterol levels
By doing those things, it is estimated that diabetes could be prevented or at least delayed until 58 percent. This is surely good news for everyone as diabetes is considered as more and more popular disease day by day.
Information on this sub-passage also ensures you that type II diabetes has close connection to lifestyle. Bad and unhealthy life style could trigger and cause diabetes, while good and health lifestyle would help much in managing and treating this disease. However unfortunately, the case of type II diabetes is increasing and this, more or less, shows that people tend to ignore and not care about keeping and maintaining a healthy life style before it is too late.
3. Gestational Diabetes
Gestational diabetes is a specific type of diabetes in which a pregnant woman suffers, particularly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Statistic mentions that this diabetes only suffers 4% of all pregnancy cases and this means that gestational diabetes is a rare problem, although the number is increasing year by year.
In pregnancy periods, women’s bodies would produce a specific hormone which could lead and trigger insulin resistance and this normally happens. However, it becomes dangerous only when the pancreas could not produce enough insulin. If it could, the hormone as well as the insulin resistance would not make any effect even cause diabetes.
There are various factors which could lead pancreas unable to produce enough insulin during the insulin resistance period. They are having too much (additional) weight at the pregnancy or overweight condition before the pregnancy. A matter of age also plays a role since the older a pregnant woman is, the higher she would have gestational diabetes risk.
It is also known that gestational diabetes in women would be recovered soon after giving birth. However, it would come again in the next pregnancy. Another good news is that this type of diabetes would also influence the baby’s healthy condition so pregnant women are supposed to control the glucose blood as well and often as possible.
Read : Diabetes symptoms – Symptoms of Diabetes In Children
Some Facts about diabetes
- Benefits of Ginger for Diabetes
- Is Fenugreek Good for Diabetes
- Reasons Why Green Tea is Best for Diabetes Patients
- Facts About Banana for Diabetes
- Facts About Popcorn and Diabetes
- Amazing Benefits of Okra for Diabetes
- Is Tea Good for Diabetes Patient
- Benefits of Brown Rice
- Benefits of Turmeric
- Is Dates Good For Diabetic Patient
- Is Carrot Good For Diabetic Patient
- Is Egg Good for Diabetic Patient
- What Should a Diabetic Eat for Breakfast and Dinner
Simple Tricks to Manage Meal Menus
As you read at previous parts, managing meal menus is one of some concrete solutions for those who have diabetes, pre-diabetes or even non-diabetes patients who want to stay away from this disease. Meal menus have big influence on human body as it determines quality of food supply and materials which will either support or damage body metabolism. Therefore, this part is intentionally and specifically written to explore about how to manage the meal menus for preventing or treating diabetes.
Anyway, if you suffer diabetes and you already had official diagnose, you do not need to worry or be pessimistic because you are not alone. What you get is not as bad as you might think and you could still do much effort to treat it. One of them is by managing your meal menus, the foods you consume in your daily. If you wonder about how is the concrete way to do it, particularly to choose foods to consume and not to consume, this part of passage would inform you much about the talk.
Following is list of food materials you should and should not consume to treat your diabetes or to prevent you being suffered :
- (Packaged) Fruit and Vegetables
Diabetes patients are required to consume much fruit and vegetables daily. However, it is noted that this rule applies for fresh fruits and vegetables. It means that the recommendation only applies for fruits and vegetables served naturally trees without any additional essences just like sweeter, preservative or even color essence. Fruit juice with additional sugar is not recommended and neither is packaged fruit drinks.
If the diabetes ‘stadium’ is already bad, it is recommended to choose consuming low-sugar contained fruits and vegetables and stay away from the opposites. Examples of fruit with rich sugar essences are junk fruit, rambutan, durian, sawo, klengkeng, ripe papaya, mango, watermelon and bananas. Meanwhile, examples of vegetable with much sugar essence are carrot and cassava, it is theBest Vegetables For Type 2 Diabetes or type 1 diabetes.
In serving fruit, it is recommended to eat it freshly or juiced without any additional essence such as sugar, sweeter or milk. Meanwhile in serving vegetables, it is suggested that the vegetables are not cooked using butter or too much oil because those could decrease fiber essence of vegetables. If you prefer to cook, do not take much time cooking because it could decrease the good nutrient inside.
- Fried food
Fried foods could cause obesity and weight gain and it is automatically not good for diabetes patients to consume fried foods. Fried food could be the Most Dangerous Food for Diabetes you consider to avoid. Additionally, it is also a matter of cholesterol as oil used in frying is one main source of cholesterol. Fried cooking way could be replaced by stemming or grilling so you do not to worry because you would not say goodbye to your favorite food. You just change the way you cook it.
- Fatty food
Fatty foods give bad impact on diabetes directly as it could increase cholesterol level and it would make blood stream crowded more and more. Examples of fatty food are meat, lamb, chicken and egg. As alternative, you could change those foods with low-cholesterol foods such as tofu, corn and so forth.
- Carbohydrate
Dealing with diabetes may require you to make significant changes in your eating habit. If you are accustomed to eat white rice, bread (made from white wheat), cereal or fried potatoes or tubers, you could begin to change them soon for treating your diabetes. You could replace them by corn rice, brown rice, wheat, steamed potatoes or steamed tubers. What and how you choose your meal, particularly for regular and big meal, would really influence and determine your glucose level.
- Milk Product
Some of milk products with high fat should be avoided by diabetes patients including full cream milk, ice cream, yogurt and cheese with high fat. This means that low fat milk products are still negotiable particularly for those with low diabetes stadium.
- Packaged, junk or instant foods and beverages
Diabetes patients are strongly prohibited to consume packaged products from both food and beverages, particularly the junk and instant one, including alcoholic drinks. They are recommended to eat healthy and natural foods and not stay close to any instant products. Consumption of plain water is also recommended to have it naturally instead from packaged bottles. However, if they could find any packaged product with low sugar level, such as plain tea, decaffeinated coffee or low fat milk, it would be good.
- Cakes
Almost all types of cake would use high amount of sugar in its making process. This should be a warning for diabetes patients who like to eat cakes since they have to change their habits slowly. If you are one of them, you better consider to change your habit soon.
- Dessert
In much culture, dessert are very identical to sweet foods such as puding or other sweet snacks. Be careful on choosing your meal menu, including the dessert, because the sugar essence could not be sweet anymore for diabetes patients.
You may infer different conclusion after reading this long passage. However, one thing for sure is that diabetes becomes popular because it has close connection with modern life style with sedentary life and bad eating habits. You, therefore, do not have other choices but to be more alert on its threat to keep you and your family away from diabetes.