Diabetes Affects Over Eighteen Million Americans
By Jim Rue
One in three victims don't know they have it. Yet. Diabetes affects over 18 million Americans. Some victims contract diabetes as young adults or children, or are even born to the disease. These people are said to suffer from Type 1, or infantile diabetes. Their bodies do not produce the insulin needed to convert sugar into a special starch called glycogen that is stored in muscle or liver tissue until it is needed.
Type 1 sufferers typically contract the disease suddenly and dramatically. Prompt diagnosis is critical, or the patient may die. Type 1 victims must take insulin-related medication daily. Happily, a device called the insulin pump has released many type 1 sufferers from a kind of slavery to the insulin needle, but they must nonetheless prick their fingers often in order to measure momentary changes in blood glucose levels.
Some Have Diabetes Thrust Upon Them
Type 2 diabetes has its onset in later adulthood, the result of maladaptive habits of nutrition and fitness. Our sedentary lifestyles coupled with lack of exercise are a recipe for contracting the disease. Type 2 diabetes is commonly called non-insulin-dependent-diabetes (NIDDM).
Most of us with adult-onset diabetes can eliminate symptoms of the disease by changing our dietary habits and increasing our exercise levels. As you might guess, most American victims of diabetes are of the second type.
But many of us diagnosed with type 2 diabetes will in fact not change our habits. Steadily increasing weight and the other health problems that follow discourages fitness programs, and the decline of exercise causes more poundage to be added, leading to an ever greater inclination toward diabetes.
In the case of NIDDM, the body is capable of producing insulin, but not enough to keep pace with the sugars, fats and starches that are being consumed.
Gestational diabetes accompanies pregnancy. The symptoms
typically dissipate after childbirth, but they can cause a difficult pregnancy in the meantime.
Tough Consequences
The consequences of unmanaged diabetes are severe. Those of us who continue to indulge in mass quantities of sweets and fats can expect increasing doses of oral insulin derivatives and eventual daily injections of the stuff. Symptoms of the disease include fatigue, excessive hunger and thirst, blurred vision,
irritability and confusion.
Morbid effects are swelling of the extremities, difficulty
standing or walking, numbness or loss of feeling in the extremities, and increasingly poor circulation gradually leading to tissue death because of the shortage of oxygen rich blood. At the extremes, this includes gangrene, the amputation of appendages, and eventual death.
