Beating The Odds:
What Is Type 1 Diabetes
Often, the parents are more concerned about what is type 1 diabetes because this disease more often strikes children or the young adult. Formerly named juvenile diabetes, this name has been dropped by more and more doctors because of the rising rates of type 1 showing up more often even into adulthood. What Is Type 1 DiabetesType 1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease. This means your own immune system mistakenly battles and destroys your beta cells within the pancreas. These beta cells are responsible for the production and distribution of the hormone insulin throughout your body. Insulin is mandatory in the human body. Its vital role is to help your body break down and store food as fuel from which we gain our body's energy. As a car needs gasoline to run, we must have insulin. Since your immune system has destroyed the cells capable of producing the insulin which is needed for your source of fuel, insulin must be received from an alternate source daily. Normally this is by insulin injection or the insulin pump. Without the insulin, normally within 2-3 days you will lose consciousness and can lead to death. Adult Onset Type 1 DiabetesWhile a child's early symptoms of diabetes will progress quite rapidly, often within weeks, an adult's onset of type 1 is slower and more gradual. Usually fatigue and muscle weakness for months on end will be the deciding factor to initiate the doctor's appointment.How Did I Get Type 1 DiabetesCurrent research has not been able to determine if this is 100% accurate yet, but the precipitating factor in type 1 seems to be some type of viral infection. The fall months of every year always seem to have greater numbers of newly diagnosed patients. This corresponds to the increased incidence of chicken pox, measles and influenza. All of these conditions are viral in nature.So when you are questioning yourself what is type 1 diabetes, just remember the two most important factors in your life now are checking your blood sugars routinely - normally up to 4-5 times per day, and administering your insulin to maintain a normal range of blood sugar for optimum health and vitality.
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*Disclaimer*
This site is not intended to replace the advice and supervision of your professional medical treatment plan. Although all of the information is true and accurate to the best of our knowledge, we still recommend you carefully check all food labels before consuming any food product. We can not assume any legal responsibility for any illness obtained while following the advice contained on this site.
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