Now we come to the 20th and 21st century epidemic of type 2 diabetes. Before, this was called adult-onset diabetes because it used to appear in grown-ups. Lately though, teenagers and children have been afflicted by this condition and this is greatly due to lifestyle.
One cause of this is insulin resistance which makes the body tissues less sensitive to insulin. This lets the sugar circulating in the blood stay there instead of entering the body cells. This requires more insulin in order to lower the blood sugar.
The other cause of type 2 diabetes is the incapacity to produce more insulin to meet the demand. The reasons for this are growing old, overweight, inherited tendency, lack of physical activity and some other hormonal condition.
As to why insulin resistance develops is not clearly understood but researches have suggested that fat cells make chemicals that result in the tissues becoming resistant to insulin. The more fat cells one has, the more chemicals are produced. This makes the sugar unable to enter the body cells where they are sorely needed.
The beta cells in the pancreas cannot meet the demand no matter how hard they work and as years pass, they slowly lose their capacity to make insulin. They can still make some but not adequate enough to keep the blood glucose levels within normal target.
The rise of the blood glucose levels sometimes results in the symptoms like increased hunger and thirst, frequent urination, unexplained weight loss and fatigue but sometimes there are no symptoms at all and this is what is dangerous. The condition may not be diagnosed until some complications have already occurred.
That is why about 33% of people who have this condition do not know they have it so please if you are at risk, get yourself tested so that strategies can be in place to fight this. Sometimes it takes twelve years before the symptoms appear.
It is good to know if you have this condition before it has the time to wreck havoc in your life. Once you know you have it, you can start taking care of it. Controlling the blood glucose level is a must to prevent the diabetes complications from setting in.
1 comment:
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