Living with diabetes
For this guide we will be going over the life of a type one diabetic. Before managing your diabetes you need to learn about your condition.
Type one diabetes is a chronic condition, this means that we are born with the ability to have the antibodies of type one. This type is where the pancreas barely produce insulin or doesn’t at all which leads to high glucose levels and no energy. When the pancreas doesn’t produce insulin, glucose can’t get into the cell. This is because insulin when attached to the sensory receptor sends a signal to GLUT and the GLUT then moves to the membrane and lets the glucose in. So without insulin this process doesn’t happen. The basic biology of the disease is something that every diabetic absolutely needs to know
Diabetes effects everything about your life including your diet. To keep your disease in check you have to manage what you eat. Diabetic s have to eat a meal high in nutrients, low in fat and added sugar and moderate in calories. Also diabetic have to pay attention to the carbohydrates they eat.
When eating carbs make sure that you’re eating grain carbs because they are a good source of fiber. The key to diabetic diet is a balanced diet.
When you’re a diabetic glucose levels are extremely important. If your high you need to bring it down so injection of insulin by a pump are needed and if your low you need to eat something that will bring it up. Checking your levels at least four times a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime) will help you monitor and understand your condition. Checking your blood sugar is what you need to make adjustments to how much insulin you are getting. As I said before high needs more inulin and lo you need less insulin. So monitoring and making adjustments to your plan is very important
For diabetic the question is if you should exercise? And the answer is yes, diabetics should do regular physical activity. This is because it keeps your weight in check, keeps your blood sugar on target, and helps insulin absorb glucose. Although there are some precautions, make sure you know how you blood sugar will react, make sure you adjust your doses to fit the activity and just beware that it may cause your levels to dip. So even though exercise helps still be cautious. Also staying fit relates to keeping your diabetes in control because it keeps you blood sugar where it supposed to be and it lessen the effects of diabetes.
I know this is overwhelming but over time it will get better. Knowing your disease is the first step to understanding and We are here to help you do that.
Complications
Diabetes is a serious condition so it has many serious complications as you will learn.
The first of many complications is Gastroparesis which is when the stomach takes too long to empty the stomach’s contents.
It can affect both a type one and a type two diabetic and is caused by blood sugar levels staying high over a long period of time causing the valgus nerve to be damaged. This disorder can cause managing your diabetes difficult, bacterial overgrowth, and bezoars that are made in the process of this disorder can cause nausea, vomiting and obstruction of the stomach.
DKA is also a big complications for diabetics. When insulin levels are really low your cells can’t get glucose which causes your body to burn fat for energy which produces ketone. Ketones build up and are poison to the body. This condition is life threatening, so if you have any symptom you need to go the hospital right now. Which is frequent urination, dry mouth, high blood glucose, and high levels of ketones
Next on the complication list is nephropathy or better known as kidney disease. Kidney disease is caused by high blood sugar making the kidneys filter too much blood. This causes the kidneys to fail and then it is life threatening. Not all diabetics develop kidney disease but some factors can influence it such as genetics, blood sugar control and blood pressure.
Kidney disease is a very serious complication for a type 1 diabetic.
Diabetes also cause big skin complications. Such as bacterial infections, fungal infections, itching, diabetic dermopathy, necrobiosis lipoidica diabeticorum, diabetic blisters, and eruptive xanthomatosis. All these conditions have many subdivision but the gist of it is that skin infections are normal for a diabetic and usually easy to treat.
The last but certainly not completely last is high blood pressure. High BP is caused by blood moving through your vessels with too much force, then your heart has to work harder. High BP can lead to heart attack, stroke, eye problems and kidney disease. High blood pressure may seem small but it is very serious.
There are lots and lots of serious complication but now you know some of the complication so you can be better aware of the impacts the disease has on your life.
Future of a diabetic treatment
Diabetes can be overwhelming but there are people out there researching and developing new ways to treat diabetes.
An innovation to treat diabetes is a blood glucose detector bracelet. This bracelet would alert a person when they need more or less glucose. A device that measures blood glucose level would be implanted into the body and would send a signal to the bracelet to vibrate which would alert you that your blood glucose level is either high or low. The bracelet will vibrate depending on how low or high your blood glucose level is. If your blood glucose level is dangerously low or high, the bracelet will vibrate more vividly than if your blood glucose level is getting to be low or high.
This innovation would help diabetics to better monitor their blood glucose levels and also keep them healthier. Sometimes a diabetic could forget to check their blood glucose level and they get sent into a diabetic coma. These comas are life threatening so something needs to be done to prevent them. This would cause there to be a lot less diabetic comas and save a whole lot of diabetic lives.
Another innovation would be an antibody that blocks antibodies from attacking the islet cells. This could potentially prevent a person from having Type 1 Diabetes because the islet cells are what produce insulin so if they don’t get attacked, they won’t have
Type 1 Diabetes. If you know for certain that a specific gene sequence gives a person diabetes, then they could inject these antibodies into their body.