What Exactly Is The Difference Between Type 1 And Type 2 Diabetes?

What Exactly Is the Difference Between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes?

We hear about diabetes all the time, so it’s easy to forget that there are two very different types of the condition. Both involve problems with insulin, but they deviate from there.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where, in general, people have a complete lack of insulin. People with type 2 diabetes are unable to use their own insulin effectively, either because they don’t make enough or because their cells are resistant to the insulin they do make. (These are the silent signs you might have diabetes.)
“Type 1 is largely a genetic condition, but since not all identical twins get diabetes, we do think that exposure to an additional environmental factor may trigger an immune response that ultimately destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas,” says Sarah Rettinger, MD, board-certified endocrinologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. “On the other hand, type 2 diabetes has a stronger genetic component, caused by a complicated interaction of genes and environment. A person with a first degree relative with type 2 has a 5 to 10 times higher risk of developing the disease than a person the same age and weight without the same family history.”
According to the 2014 National Diabetes Statistics Report, 29.1 million Americans have the disease. Of these people, one in four of them are undiagnosed and unaware of their condition. The prevalence is twice as high in non-Hispanic black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native adults than non-Hispanic white adults, and higher in individuals aged 65 and older (1 in 4 Continue reading

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The prevention and control the type-2 diabetes by changing lifestyle and dietary pattern

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INTRODUCTION
Diabetes mellitus or type-2 diabetes, is one of the major non-communicable and fastest growing public health problems in the world, is a condition difficult to treat and expensive to manage. It has been estimated that the number of diabetes sufferers in the world will double from the current value of about 190 million to 325 million during the next 25 years.[1,2,3] Individuals with type-2 diabetes are at a high risk of developing a range of debilitating complications such as cardiovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, nephropathy, changes to the retina and blindness that can lead to disability and premature death. It also imposes important medical and economic burdens. Genetic susceptibility and environmental influences seem to be the most important factors responsible for the development of this condition. However, a drastic increase of physical inactivity, obesity, and type-2 diabetes has been recently observed. The fact indicates that obesity and physical inactivity may constitute the main reasons for the increasing burden of diabetes in the developed world.[4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
Fortunately, because environmental factors are modifiable, disease manifestation from these factors is largely preventable. Diet is one of the major factors now linked to a wide range of diseases including diabetes. The amount and type of food consumed is a fundamental determinant of human health. Diet constitutes a crucial aspect of the overall management of diabetes, which may involve diet alone, diet with oral hypoglycemic drugs, or diet with insulin.[11,12,13,14,15] Di Continue reading

Stressing The Difference Between Type 1 And Type 2 Diabetes: Why Do We Care?

“That’s what people get when they eat too much sugar.”
A chance remark and nothing of note to the woman that said it. But to me, it stung.
This was overheard while waiting for my prescription in Lloyds Pharmacy. A little boy keen for knowledge asked his mother to explain what a poster concerning undiagnosed diabetes was about.
I have been irked by the campaign this poster is a part of for some time already. They were first displayed during Diabetes Awareness Week back in June but have remained in stores, tacked to the front desks and to outside windows, ever since. They state that “11 million people have undiagnosed diabetes in the UK.” It uses the word ‘diabetes’ as one sweeping, blanket label. If you squint you might notice a tiny little asterisk alongside the word, which denotes ‘type 2’, written in nondescript letters in the bottom right hand corner.
Within the diabetes online community the lumping together of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes is often a hot topic. But it recently occurred to me that I’ve never addressed it myself in a blog, despite having spoken a lot about it in offline conversations and on social media. After the incident in Lloyds Pharmacy it struck me that I needed to write that blog. This one.
Let me stress from the outset this is not about attacking people with type 2 diabetes or waging a war of type 1 vs. type 2. That unpleasantness is something I hate. Diabetes is a pain in the arse for anyone that has it, and we all have the right to moan and vent if we need to. But there are differences here which must be made clear whenever the Continue reading

Does Diabetes Cause Varicose Veins? What’s The Connection

A varicose veins is a common problem which affects both men as well as women. Around 40 million people are known to be affected by this condition in which there is an acute pain in the body and the movement of the affected area becomes a problem. It is important to treat this because if the condition is allowed to grow, it may lead to serious threats such as thrombosis, blood clotting problems, ulcers, sores in the ankle area amongst other complications. In most of the cases, diabetes is believed to be the main cause of varicose veins. However, the same may not always hold true because many people who are diabetic do not have varicose veins and vice versa. Let us further analyze the relationship between varicose veins and diabetes in the article that follows.
So, come and join in for the article “Does Diabetes Cause Varicose Veins?”
What are Varicose Veins?
Varicose veins are the large, blue-colored veins that can be easily seen through the skin. The most common area of the body where you can witness these enlarged and twisted veins are on the legs.
The body has a mechanism that prevents the back flow of blood through the valves of the veins. In certain cases, when this mechanism of the body fails, varicose veins start appearing. As a result, the blood which does not have oxygen in sufficient quantity is accumulated in the veins and is not taken back to the lungs for restarting the circulation of blood. It is for this reason that you see the purple colored bulging veins which accumulate in the body.Varicose veins also cause venous insufficiency which again is a problem Continue reading

Got pre-diabetes? Here's five things to eat or avoid to prevent type 2 diabetes

Pre-diabetes is diagnosed when your blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be classified as having type 2 diabetes. Pre-diabetes is an early alert that your diabetes risk is now very high. It is ten to 20 times greater compared to the risk for those with normal blood sugars. What you choose to eat, or avoid, influences this risk.
Diabetes Prevention Programs
Studies around the world, including Finland, China and the US have shown diabetes prevention programs prevent or delay progression to type 2 diabetes. When people eat more healthily, drop their body weight by 5-10% and walk for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, they lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by about 58% over two years.
We recently gave 101 men with pre-diabetes a self-directed diabetes prevention program over six months. We found they were able to reduce their portion size of potato and meat and improve their variety of health foods. They were able to reduce the proportion of energy coming from junk food by 7.6% more than the group who didn't change their diet and got a four-point increase in their scores from the Healthy Eating Quiz. These improved eating patterns were associated with an average weight loss of 5.5kg and better blood sugar regulation.
This is great news for the 318 million adults around the world, including two million Australians, who have pre-diabetes.
The original diabetes prevention studies started in the 1980s. Back then the advice was to reduce your total kilojoule intake by eating less fat, especially from take-away, processed and fried foods and t Continue reading