What is Diabetes?
There are four different types of diabetes.
Diabetes is a serious disease and there is no cure for it. However, it can be brought under control by a proper diabetic diet.
Type I Diabetes (juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes): The reason for type I diabetes is due to the pancreas's inability to produce insulin.
Type 2 Diabetes (non-insulin-dependent diabetes or adult-onset diabetes): This diabetes is a result of body tissues becoming resistant to insulin. It is usually hereditary.
Type 2 Diabetes is more common than Type 1 Diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a life-long disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood. Type 2 Diabetes is, with lots of work, reversible.
Type 2 diabetes may account for about 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Up to two-thirds of people with type 2 diabetes have no symptoms. Obesity is the single most important risk factor for type 2 diabetes. An estimated 20% of all cases of new-onset type 2 diabetes are in individuals between the ages of 9-19.
Gestational Diabetes Gestational diabetes is a problem of elevated blood sugar that only happens when a woman is pregnant. It develops at around 24 weeks gestation and occurs in between 2-10 percent of pregnant women.
Because it is one of the more common disorders of pregnancy, it is one that every pregnant woman should be screened for.
What happens in pregnancy with blood sugar?
Normally, your body breaks down your food into a simple sugar called glucose. The glucose goes into your bloodstream and this triggers insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, to be released. Insulin helps put glucose into the cells of the body to be used in metabolism and gathering energy.
In gestational diabetes, there are hormonal changes that happen in pregnancy that make the cells less responsive to the effects of insulin. The insulin level goes up in pregnancy to compensate for the less responsive cells but some women cannot keep up with the insulin needed to put the glucose in the cells and the glucose or “blood sugar” level goes up.
Fortunately, the vast majority of women resolve their gestational diabetes after the pregnancy is over with but the medical recommendations are that if you have gestational diabetes, you should be checked every three years after the baby is born because half of all women will get regular diabetes at some point in their later lives.
The more you know about diabetes, the more you'll be able to take the right steps to take control of your condition.
If neglected, diabetes can lead to various complications such as damage to the kidneys, heart disease, nerve damage, hypoglycemia (drastic reduction in glucose levels) or hyperglycemia (drastic increase in glucose levels).
Prediabetes Those who test with a range of 5.7% to 6.4% Hemoglobin A1C are considered to have prediabetes, any reading between 6.0% and 6.4% is considered at especially high risk.
This is a threshold area and is an alert that there is a very high risk of type 2 diabetes onset in the future. Those with prediabetes can do a lot to prevent the onset, including diet, exercise, weight loss as needed, and medication.
See Your Doctor Regularly!
People with diabetes will experience many long-term and serious complications.
Diabetes is a disease in which the body does not produce or use insulin properly, therefore, it is up to you and your doctor to learn how to manipulate the functions of your body properly to offset or minimize the complications of uncontrolled diabetes.
These complications will affect virtually every part of the body from the feet and legs to the internal organs.
With proper control, you can still live a healthy and long life but it helps to be a fanatic about controlling your diabetes.
Conditions associated with type 2 diabetes include hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia.
Don't Let Diabetes Beat You!
Living with diabetes is not the easiest thing to do in life, but it is necessary and possible.
Once you train your body and mind & soul to live WITH diabetes, then you will see that it is only another way of living. You have to change your way of life and you will be satisfied with yourself when you do.
If you are a diabetic, you may be one of the few diabetics that don't really believe that it can happen to you. “I don't have it, not me!” you say. You may feel that if you ignore it, it will go away. If you just change the way that you eat, it will go away or if you just change what you eat, that will be the end of it.
None of that is true, Type 1 diabetes is not reversible. The trick is to make your body create insulin. Type 1 patients' bodies just do not make insulin. There is no cure or reversal but you can live with it.
Type 2 diabetes & pre-diabetes are reversible with hard work. Naturally, it will be easier if you are prediabetic. Either way, change, reinvention is necessary. Your mind, body & soul must work hard and together to reverse diabetes, but it is possible.
I believe that your mindset helps determines your success, or not. With the proper mindset, self-confidence and desire to change, you can do what you have to do to reverse type 2 diabetes & pre-diabetes.
Things That Can Help You
Change your diet: Ask you, doctor, what your ideal weight is and change your eating so that you achieve that weight. Losing weight is critical if you are diabetic. Don't forget, you don't need a diet, you need a complete lifestyle change in the way that you eat.
Learn to relax: Diabetes will put stress on your life. Learn what stress is and how you can relieve it.
Learn to Meditate: Learn to meditate so that you can face the daily hurdles in life.
Exercise: Yoga comes in many forms. I am sure that with a little research, you will find an exercise regiment that suits you.
Find a habit: Find something that you can immerse yourself into when you feel the need.