Diabetes — Don’t Sugar Coat it
Hello ! This is the first article in the series of Type 1 Tales. First let me introduce myself a bit. I am a type 1 diabetic for the last 3 and half years. Now I am 22 years old and working as a software engineer.
In this story, I am gonna clearly explain what diabetes is and the major types of it with an excellent analogy. The whole idea of starting this series is to educate people about Type 1 Diabetes and raise as much awareness as possible.
What is Diabetes?
There are many types of diabetes out of which major ones are type1 and type2. Before going in detail about those, first let’s understand the below fact.
How do we get energy for doing tasks? Absolutely from food..without it we can’t able to survive. Ofcourse we can survive for a day or two but not for a long time. So whatever we eat, gets digested in the body and the nutrients in it are absorbed. Out of which the one which gives energy is Carbohydrates. So when we do some activity say walking, the calories are burned. How do we get these calories(energy) prior before the activity? The answer is Glucose which is given by carbohydrates decomposition.
Next these carbs in the form of energy molecules(Glucose) cannot directly go into the required body parts . They are first absorbed into our blood stream directly after the digestion and this is called blood glucose or blood sugar. To move that energy to the whole body parts from blood stream we need a carrier. That carrier is insulin. The hormone which is produced by beta cells of Pancreas which in turn controls the blood glucose. So whenever we eat something our blood glucose starts increasing slowly after digestion.(both for diabetics and non-diabetics). For a non — diabetic, the pancreas gets triggered by this and starts releasing insulin to move out the glucose from blood stream😊. But for a diabetic things are different.😒The blood glucose will not be moved to body parts and stays in blood for a long time with higher amounts.
Types and difference
Let us understand the different types of diabetes with lock and key analogy.
Type2 Diabetes
Pancreas still secretes the insulin. But this insulin is not enough to decrease the blood glucose to normal values or the body develops insulin resistance so that the secreted insulin is not absorbed properly.
Consider each cell which needs energy has a lock to be opened. And the insulin molecules as the keys. When key is able to open the lock, the energy enters into the cell..i.e, insulin carries the energy into the cell. In type 2 diabetes, either the produced keys are not enough to open all the locks or the locks are not working properly(fat and obesity). But still the keys are being produced.
Type1 Diabetes
Pancreas is no longer able to secrete the insulin. The body’s own immune system attacks the cells which produces insulin. These cells can never be generated again. So the blood glucose keeps climbing up whenever we eat anything.
There are no keys(insulin) at all this time. To open the lock we need a key and that key is missing totally. So we need keys(insulin) from external environment to keep up the normal blood glucose levels.
There are some other types of diabetes as well like gestational diabetes, LADA, etc., But the type1 and type2 are the major ones.
For type 2 insulin may or may not be needed depending on person’s condition. Some oral drugs are enough most of the times to increase the insulin sensitivity.
For type 1 insulin is the only way to control and it is needed lifelong.
Hope I made it clear about type 1 and type 2 diabetes. More articles are on the way.
And eating sugar is not at all related to the diabetes cause. It is a myth.
Thanks for the read. Give some claps if you like it .
