What is Diabetes?
Diabetes involves the lack of capacity to manage the amount of glucose in the blood. The main hormone related to diabetes is insulin. During the digestion process carbohydrates and starches are broken down into glucose. Insulin allows liver, muscle and fat cells to take up glucose from the blood and stockpile it as glycogen.
In type 1 diabetes insulin has ceased to be produced by the body. In patients with Type 1 diabetes the autoimmune system, for one reason or another, destroyed the insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Patients have to obtain insulin for the rest of their lives, normally by means of injection, in order to handle glucose in the blood.
In type 2 diabetes patients produce insufficient insulin or are insulin resistant. They can require external insulin, though dietary and lifestyle alterations along with medications may help control symptoms About 55% of people with type 2 diabetes are obese and 80% are overweight. It is the increased fatty acid mobilization that gives rise to an increased insulin resistance. Visceral fat around the abdomen that surrounds internal organs plays a particularly important role. The enormous increase in type 2 diabetes with the western lifestyle and rising obesity have demonstrated that obesity plays a chief role in inducing type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes can result in life threatening complications. These complications include stroke, blindness, heart disease, kidney disease, and sciatic nerve dysfunction. Sciatica, itself, can produce loss of sensation and movement in your legs. These results are all grave and put at risk your quality of life.
Patterns of Eating and Exercise are Within Your Control
Type 2 diabetes is increasingly prevalent in our overstuffed and under exercised obese populace. It is often called an obesity disease or a prosperity disease. Type 2 diabetes is seldom detected in third world countries where people are poor and can't afford to eat the highly refined, high fat diets of western countries.
The occurrence of obesity and type 2 diabetes can be tightly linked to the excessive consumption of processed and manufactured consumables like cookies, biscuits, white bread, chocolates, and ice cream. If you examine the ingredients of most manufactured foods you will find refined carbohydrates as sugar in a variety of forms including raw sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, cane juice, dextrose, maltose, and a lot of other ingredients. These ingredients predominantly come from natural carbohydrates with all the healthy fiber and starch removed.
These sugars rapidly go into the blood stream and cause insulin production to soar as the body tries to normalize the abrupt rise in blood sugar. As the rush of insulin does its job of removing sugars from the blood stream you often become very weary and sluggish because too much sugar was removed from the blood stream. You then hunger after more sugary snacks and this sequence starts again.
The result of all this refined sugar is that your body converts a good deal of this excess sugar to fat. And, fat increases body weight and elevates triglycerides in the blood. This increases the blood pressure and reduces the effectiveness of insulin, eventually resulting in diabetes.
There are other lifestyle causes of high blood sugar. Long term stress is a cause of elevated glucose levels because stress itself produces hormones that elevate blood glucose levels. Other risk factors for diabetes include smoking (raises sugar levels in the blood and reduces insulin effectiveness), elevated cholesterol and high triglyceride levels, and heavy alcohol use.
In general, type 2 diabetes is primarily a lifestyle choice. It is essentially avoidable by participating in an exercise program and eating a healthful diet low in fats and refined carbohydrates. If you are in jeopardy of getting diabetes, you ought to consult your doctor and follow a prescribed strategy of lifestyle modifications. This can result in a long and vigorous life.
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