Diabetes mellitus: causes, symptoms, types

Diabetes is a lot of people all over the world. According to medical statistics, they suffer about 60 million people and about the same number of people have diabetes mellitus in a latent form.

Annually the number of patients increases by 8-10% and every 10-15 years their number doubles.

Diabetes mellitus: what it is, symptoms ^

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease in which the production of the insulin hormone responsible for the processing of glucose in the body is reduced by the pancreas.

As you know, the normal life of any living being is impossible without energy. To ensure that vital processes can occur in the human body, such as breathing, digestion, movement, glucose is required, which it produces from food.

Food from the stomach enters the intestine, converting there into glucose( sugar) and from there enters the blood. Part of the glucose is deposited in the liver, muscles and fatty tissue in the form of glycogen in reserve - in case you need to maintain a normal sugar level.

A rise in blood sugar levels after a meal in the blood is a signal for the pancreas about the beginning of insulin production - a hormone by which cells can get energy from glucose. With diabetes, the pancreas produces insulin much less than necessary, so cells can not metabolize glucose from the blood.

With insufficient insulin production, the sugar content in the blood becomes higher, but the cells at the same time are hungry and forced to take energy from their own fat. When the body begins to use its fat stores as a source of energy, the weight of the patient begins to decline greatly.

• The normal blood sugar content is up to 6 mmol / l. When this figure increases to 9-10 mmol / l, glucose begins to appear in the urine.
• In this case, a lot of water and useful salts are lost in the urine, and the patient has a strong thirst and frequent profuse urination.
• Later on, acetone appears in the blood and urine, which acts as a substance poisoning the body.

A person begins to feel worse - starts to feel constant weakness, fast fatigue, nausea and even vomiting. In addition, frequent symptoms of diabetes:

• poor wound healing,
• low resistance to infections,
• slow recovery,
• decrease in body temperature,
• convulsions,
• numbness and tingling in the extremities.

Diabetes mellitus: types one and two ^

There are the following types of diabetes mellitus - the first type( insulin-dependent) and the second type( insulin-independent).

Type 1 diabetes mellitus( insulin-dependent)

Type 1 diabetes most often affects young people and children and is associated with the fact that the patient's body produces antibodies that kill cells of its own pancreas that can not produce insulin in sufficient quantities.

This type of diabetes, unfortunately, is incurable at the current level of medicine and requires constant insulin injections. But by injecting a daily dose of insulin into the body, a person can lead a normal life and feel great, whereas at the beginning of the last century, patients with type 1 diabetes were doomed to suffering because of a lack of medications that could help them.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus( insulin-independent)

Type 2 diabetes most often develops in overweight people aged 40 and over and is considered a disease not congenital, but acquired, in which cells become insensitive to insulin.

Physicians call the first measure in the fight against type 2 diabetes, weight loss, because:

• for obesity of the first degree, the risk of the disease increases 3 times,
• at the second degree - 5 times,
• at the third degree of obesity - 10 times.

Patients are prescribed a diet that allows you to smoothly reduce weight to normal and keep it that way all your life. Very often, only normalizing the weight and diet is enough to lower the sugar to normal and eliminate the signs and symptoms of diabetes. In case of ineffectiveness of the diet, prescribe sugar-reducing tablets, and only as a last resort - insulin injections.

Can diabetes be prevented ^

Scientists believe that genetic predisposition combined with obesity and age after 40 years is the most significant cause of diabetes. It can also provoke its development of pancreatic disease, viral infections and severe stress.

Contrary to popular belief, diabetes does not arise from the use of sweets. If a person has no hereditary predisposition to the disease, there is no excess weight and good physical activity, then sweets can be eaten.

If your close relatives are diagnosed with diabetes, and from eating sweets you get obesity, then you are at risk of this disease. But in the same way in the risk group are those who do not at all eat sweets, but lead a sedentary lifestyle and are obese from fast foods, hamburgers, chips and other far from sweet products.

Some people are afraid that if their close relatives get sick in adulthood, they will not be able to avoid this disease. Doctors have long debunked this myth and argue that although the role of hereditary factors in type 2 diabetes is high enough, at a normal weight, the right diet and sufficient physical activity to prevent diabetes is quite possible, since the risk of its development in this case is extremely small.

Some patients mistakenly think that they should exclude carbohydrates from the menu, and sugar will immediately become normal. This is a dangerous delusion, because it is vitally important for every person to get carbohydrates with food, because only from them it is possible to get glucose - a source of energy for the body.

• To avoid a sharp rise in blood sugar, the diet should be predominantly slow-digestible carbohydrates - cereals, fruits and vegetables, which give a feeling of satiety, improve the work of the intestines and remove excess cholesterol.
• And easily digestible carbohydrates, such as sweets and sweet drinks should be excluded so that there are not sudden jumps in blood glucose.

Excellent prevention of diabetes mellitus - physical activity that contributes to weight loss, better fat digestion and improved metabolism. The physical load should be moderate, for example quiet walking, because with considerable physical stress, a strong drop in sugar and the development of hypoglycemia are possible.

Scientists assure that modern laboratory methods of research allow to determine at the earliest stage deviations in carbohydrate metabolism, and also through preventive and curative measures to prevent the development of symptoms of the disease.