What Exactly is Diabetes?

Diabetes involves the lack of ability to regulate the concentration of glucose in the blood. The chief hormone associated with diabetes is insulin. Through the digestion process carbohydrates and starches are broken down into glucose. Insulin causes liver, muscle and fat cells to take up glucose from the blood and accumulate it as glycogen.

In type 1 diabetes insulin is no longer produced by the body. In patients with Type 1 diabetes the autoimmune system, for one reason or another, destroyed the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Patients need to take insulin for the rest of their lives, normally via injection, in order to process glucose in the blood.

In type 2 diabetes patients produce inadequate insulin or are insulin resistant. They can require external insulin, though dietary and lifestyle changes as well as medications often help manage symptoms About 55% of individuals with type 2 diabetes are obese and 80% are overweight. It’s the increased fatty acid mobilization that produces an increased insulin resistance. Visceral fat around the abdomen that surrounds internal organs plays a particularly significant role. The massive growth in type 2 diabetes with the western lifestyle and rising obesity have demonstrated that obesity plays a main role in inducing type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes can result in life threatening complications. These complications include stroke, blindness, heart disease, kidney disease, and sciatic nerve dysfunction. Sciatica, itself, can produce loss of feeling and movement in your legs. These results are all serious and endanger your quality of life.

Diet and Fitness are Within Your Control

Type 2 diabetes is increasingly prevalent in our overstuffed and under exercised obese population. It is at times called an obesity disease or a prosperity disease. Type 2 diabetes is rarely found in less developed countries where people are poor and can’t afford to eat the highly refined, high fat diets of western countries.

The prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes can be strongly linked to the high consumption of processed and manufactured foods like cookies, biscuits, white bread, chocolates, and ice cream. If you look at the ingredients of most manufactured foods you will discover refined carbohydrates as sugar in various forms including raw sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, cane juice, dextrose, maltose, and a host of other ingredients. These ingredients predominantly come from natural carbohydrates with all the healthy fiber and starch eliminated.

These sugars quickly pass into the blood stream and cause insulin production to soar as the body attempts to regulate the abrupt rise in blood sugar. As the rush of insulin does its job of removing sugars from the blood stream you often become very weary and exhausted since too much sugar was removed from the blood stream. You then crave more sugary refreshments and this cycle starts yet again.

The result of all this refined sugar is that your body converts much of this excess sugar to fat. And, fat increases body mass and increases triglycerides in the blood. This increases the blood pressure and lowers the effectiveness of insulin, eventually resulting in diabetes.

There are other lifestyle causes of high blood sugar. Long term stress is a cause of elevated glucose levels since stress itself produces hormones that affect blood glucose levels. Other risk factors for diabetes include smoking (raises sugar levels in the blood and reduces insulin effectiveness), high cholesterol and high triglyceride levels, and heavy alcohol use.

Overall, type 2 diabetes is principally a lifestyle choice. It is essentially preventable by taking part in an exercise program and eating a healthful diet low in fats and refined carbohydrates. If you are in jeopardy of getting diabetes, you should consult your doctor and follow a prescribed strategy of lifestyle modifications. This can result in a long and energetic life.

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