Coping With Diabetes Mellitus
Diabetes mellitus, known simply as diabetes to most, is on the rise in the United States. It affects people of all colors, occupations and backgrounds. It can be very devastating for someone to learn that they have diabetes mellitus, but luckily many ways of coping with it have been identified.
What Is It?
Diabetes mellitus is a syndrome of a disordered metabolism that results in abnormally high blood sugar levels. These blood sugar levels are usually controlled by an interaction of multiple chemicals and hormones, including the hormone known as insulin. Insulin is produced in the beta cells of the pancreas. Diabetes mellitus occurs when something goes wrong in the pancreas and it is unable to correctly produce or use insulin. Diabetes mellitus can also occur because the body becomes resistance to insulin’s effects.
Whatever occurs, diabetes mellitus can result in hyperglycemia, which causes most of the outward symptoms of diabetes mellitus: increased fluid intake and excessive urine production, blurred vision, unexplained weight loss, lethargy and changes in the body’s metabolism.
How Is It Treated?
Luckily, diabetes mellitus is treatable. Insulin is now artificially produced and can now be injected directly into the bloodstream. Sufferers must manually check their blood sugar levels – usually with portable meters that require a speck of blood – and then, if the levels require adjusting, they have to inject a correct dose of insulin.
Complications
The complications of diabetes mellitus can be very serious. Among the most serious are hypoglycemia, ketoacidosis (which causes nausea, vomiting and even unconsciousness) and even nonketonic hypersmolar coma (like the name implies, a coma caused by blood sugar imbalance.) It can also cause problems in the long-term, like a doubled risk of cardiovascular disease, gangrene as well as chronic renal failure, nerve damage, retinal damage that leads to blindness, and even erectile dysfunction.
Types Of Diabetes Mellitus
There is actually more than one type of diabetes. The first type is known as diabetes mellitus type 1. It used to be referred to as juvenile diabetes, childhood-onset diabetes, and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. However, as more adults began being diagnosed with the disease, the name changed.
Type 1 diabetes is caused by the loss of valuable insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. These cells no longer produce insulin correctly. There is no way to guard against type 1 diabetes. Most people affected are otherwise healthy – they’re not overweight and often exercise regularly. Even their sensitivity to insulin itself is normal. The main treatment for type 1 diabetes is insulin injection.
Diabetes mellitus type 2 is different. The body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin at the same time their body produces less of it. It is more common than type 1. Symptoms are usually very mild and are treated at first by attempts at lifestyle change. Gestational diabetes occurs in pregnant women and usually disappears immediately after the affected mother gives birth.
In this eBook, you are going to learn the 21 Diabetic Myths that many people may have heard and learn the truth about each of them.
I hope you gain some benefit from reading this short eBook. Many of the myths worry folks when they first become diagnosed as a diabetic.