What is Diabetes?

Your body breaks down most of the food you eat into sugar (glucose) and releases it into your bloodstream. When your blood sugar goes up, it signals your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin acts like a key to let the blood sugar into your body’s cells for use as energy.

With diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use it as well as it should. When there isn’t enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream. Over time, that can cause serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease.

There isn’t a cure yet for diabetes, but losing weight, eating healthy food, and being active can really help. Other things you can do to help:

• Take medicine as prescribed.
• Get diabetes self-management education and support.
• Make and keep health care appointments.

Types of Diabetes

There are three main types of diabetes: type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes (diabetes while pregnant).

Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes is thought to be caused by an autoimmune reaction (the body attacks itself by mistake). This reaction stops your body from making insulin. Approximately 5-10% of the people who have diabetes have type 1. Symptoms of type 1 diabetes often develop quickly. It’s usually diagnosed in children, teens, and young adults. If you have type 1 diabetes, you’ll need to take insulin every day to survive. Currently, no one knows how to prevent type 1 diabetes.

Type 2 Diabetes

With type 2 diabetes, your body doesn’t use insulin well and can’t keep blood sugar at normal levels. About 90-95% of people with diabetes have type 2. It develops over many years and is usually diagnosed in adults (but more and more in children, teens, and young adults). You may not notice any symptoms, so it’s important to get your blood sugar tested if you’re at risk. Type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed with healthy lifestyle changes, such as:

• Losing weight.
• Eating healthy food.
• Being active.

Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes develops in pregnant women who have never had diabetes. If you have gestational diabetes, your baby could be at higher risk for health problems. Gestational diabetes usually goes away after your baby is born. However, it increases your risk for type 2 diabetes later in life. Your baby is more likely to have obesity as a child or teen and develop type 2 diabetes later in life.

What Leads to Diabetes

Type 1 and type 2 diabetes have different causes, but there are two factors that are important in both. You inherit a predisposition to the disease, then something in your environment triggers it.

That’s right: genes alone are not enough. One proof of this is identical twins. Identical twins have identical genes. Yet when one twin has type 1 diabetes, the other gets the disease, at most, only half the time. When one twin has type 2 diabetes, the other’s risk is three in four at most.

Type 1 Diabetes

In most cases of type 1 diabetes, people need to inherit risk factors from both parents. We think these factors must be more common in white people because white people have the highest rate of type 1 diabetes.

Because most people who are at risk do not get diabetes, researchers want to find out what the environmental triggers are. One trigger might be related to cold weather. Type 1 diabetes develops more often in winter than summer and is more common in places with cold climates. Another trigger might be viruses. It’s possible that a virus that has only mild effects on most people triggers type 1 diabetes in others. Early diet may also play a role. For example, type 1 diabetes is less common in people who were breastfed and in those who first ate solid foods at later ages.

In many people, the development of type 1 diabetes seems to take many years. In experiments that follow relatives of people with type 1 diabetes, researchers have found that most of those who later got diabetes had certain autoantibodies, or proteins that destroy bacteria or viruses (antibodies “gone bad” that attack the body’s own tissues), in their blood for years before they are diagnosed.

Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes has a stronger link to family history and lineage than type 1, and studies of twins have shown that genetics play a very strong role in the development of type 2 diabetes. Race can also play a role.

Yet it also depends on environmental factors. Lifestyle also influences the development of type 2 diabetes. Obesity tends to run in families, and families often have similar eating and exercise habits.

If you have a family history of type 2 diabetes, it may be difficult to figure out whether your diabetes is due to lifestyle factors or genetics. Most likely it is due to both. However, don’t lose heart! Studies show that it is possible to delay or prevent type 2 diabetes by exercising and losing weight. Learn how you can prevent or delay type 2 diabetes.

Treatments for Diabetes

Eagle’s Landing provides the following Diabetes treatments and services:

Dr. Ronald S. Watts Speaks on Diabetes

Continuous Glucose Monitoring

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) is a small wearable device that tracks your glucose throughout the day and night, notifying you of the highs and lows so you can take action. CGM helps to minimize the guesswork that comes from making decisions solely on a number from a blood glucose meter reading for better diabetes management.

Whether you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, CGM can help you make more informed treatment decisions that can lead to better overall glycemic control. A CGM system consists of three parts: a glucose sensor, a transmitter and a small receiver that displays real-time glucose information.

Insulin Pump Therapy

An insulin pump is an external device that delivers insulin more physiologically than injections. It utilizes rapid acting insulin and delivers a small background dose continuously (basal insulin) to serve the same function as long acting insulin does. At mealtime, you enter in your carbohydrates and blood glucose, and the insulin pump will deliver the appropriate insulin amount (bolus insulin.)

• Basal Rate: Small amounts of insulin delivered continuously (24/7) for normal functions of the body (not including food). We determine your programmed rate.
• Bolus Rate: Additional insulin you can deliver “on demand” to match the food you are going to eat or to correct a high blood sugar. Insulin pumps have bolus calculators that help you calculate your bolus amount based on settings that are determined by our office.

Pump therapy offers flexibility in your life with improved glycemic control. Instead of taking multiple injections daily, on an insulin pump you change out your infusion set on average about once every three days.