Blog #2: Diabetes in America

Diabetes in America

For my first real topic, I wanted to tackle a subject that is often the unfortunate victim of over-generalization: diabetes.

Diabetes, in its most basic form, is where the body fails to "combat" glucose in the bloodstream, causing your blood sugar level to raise.

In diabetes, there are primarily two ways that this happens, and they ware very different from each other. The difference are split in name: Type I Diabetes and Type II Diabetes.

Type I Diabetes, aka Juvenile Diabetes, is a form of diabetes that is genetic, and has nothing to do with lifestyle. In short, T1D is when the pancreas NATURALLY cannot process sugar. This is when insulin pumps and injections are needed, because the body can not function if the sugar content in the bloodstream is too high OR too low. Juvenile Diabetes is something you are born with, and is usually developed between the ages of 8-20. Unfortunately, there is currently no cure available, but significant progress towards understanding the disease has been made in the last 20 years, giving the Juvenile community hope that a cure isn't far off.

Unfortunately, people confuse Type I with it's much more ugly cousin: Type II Diabetes. Plain and simple, T2D is when the body develops a resistance to the insulin the body naturally produces, due to an extremely unhealthy diet that usually contains of WAY too much sugar, and not enough exercise. Type II is very preventable, and is a direct result of the kind of lifestyle you lead. It ends with the same outcome as Type I, where Insulin Pumps and Injections are needed to combat the disease and keep the body functioning.

The difference between the two is how they are formed: Type I is genetic, there is nothing you can do about it. You have it, or you don't. Type II is gained, however, and can be cured AND prevented by a healthy diet and exercise regiment.

I hope this helps clear up a little confusion between the two. This post serves merely as an introduction, hopefully as a series of posts that progressively go more in-depth.

Thank you for reading!