Diabetes is a metabolic disorder mainly when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high because the body cannot convert the glucose into energy. Blood glucose is the main type of sugar found in your blood and your main source of energy. Glucose comes from the food you eat and is also made in your liver. Your blood carries glucose to all your body cells to use for energy.
Your pancreas —an organ, located between your stomach and spine – that helps with digestion releases a hormone called insulin into your blood. Insulin helps your blood carry glucose to all your body’s cells. Sometimes your body doesn’t make enough insulin or the insulin doesn’t work the way it should. Glucose then stays in your blood and doesn’t reach your cells. Your blood glucose levels get too high and can cause diabetes or pre-diabetes.
The signs and symptoms of diabetes include being very thirsty, urinating often, feeling very hungry, feeling very tired, losing weight without trying, sores that heal slowly, dry and itchy skin, feelings of pins and needles in your feet, losing feeling in your feet, blurry eyesight, among others.
There are two main types of diabetes, which are Type One Diabetes and Type Two diabetes. Type One Diabetes used to be called juvenile diabetes and develops most often in young people, although it can also develop in adults. In Type One diabetes, the pancreas no longer makes insulin or enough insulin because the body’s immune system, which normally protects you from infection by getting rid of bacteria, viruses, and other harmful substances, has attacked and destroyed the cells that make insulin.
Type Two diabetes, which used to be called adult-onset diabetes, can affect people at any age, even children. It develops most often in middle-aged and older people. People who are overweight and inactive are more likely to develop Type Two diabetes.
Type Two diabetes usually begins with insulin resistance—a condition that occurs when fat, muscle, and liver cells do not use insulin to carry glucose into the body’s cells to use for energy. As a result, the body needs more insulin to help glucose enter cells. At first, the pancreas keeps up with the added demand by making more insulin. Over time, the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin when blood sugar levels increase, such as after meals. If your pancreas can no longer make enough insulin, you will need to treat your Type Two diabetes.
Management and treatment of diabetes includes losing weight, taking shots, also called injections of insulin or taking oral medicines, making healthy food choices (diet), reducing carbohydrate intake and having fibre-rich food such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes (which are beans, peas and lentils), whole-wheat flour and wheat bran.
Complications associated with diabetes mellitus include diabetic retinopathy, which is a leading cause of blindness and visual disability, kidney failure, diabetic neuropathy – neuropathy can lead to sensory loss and damage to the limbs. It is also a major cause of impotence in diabetic men. Other complications are heart disease such as hyperglycemia which entails damaged blood vessels through a process called “atherosclerosis”, or clogging of arteries. This narrowing of arteries can lead to a decreased blood flow to heart muscle causing a heart attack, or to the brain leading to stroke. There is also diabetic foot disease.
• Saara Nelao Shikufa is an enrolled nurse/midwife and a medical student at Belarusian State Medical University, Minsk, Belarus. She can be reached at nshikufa@gmail.com.