Nutrition, Food, and You Essay 2
Just as a Ninja is a silent but deadly killer, so is a disease that is quickly becoming an epidemic. Diabetes is a very serious disease in which your body does not produce enough insulin in the bloodstream. To really comprehend diabetes we must first know how insulin works in our body. Simplistically put, insulin was once a sugar called glucose. Glucose is an energy source for our bodies that uses insulin to transport it from the bloodstream to the muscle, fat, and liver cells where we use it as energy. The lack of insulin leads to high blood sugar because the glucose cannot be transported to the muscle, fat, and liver cells. High blood sugar can lead to several different symptoms, some which include blurry vision, excess thirst, fatigue, hunger, and frequent urination. Although these problems don’t seem too serious, after years of having the disease it can lead to other very serious complications. Severe problems such as heart attack, blindness, nerve damage, and even death can occur if left untreated or poorly managed. If you have one or multiple symptoms of diabetes your doctor should check you out immediately. As previously discussed there are many signs and tests that can be used to diagnose if you are diabetic. However even if you test positive there are two different types of diabetes. Type one diabetes may arise at any age however it mostly affects children or young adults. For type one diabetes the pancreas makes little or no insulin at all. For this type an injection of insulin is needed once or multiple times a day depending on how bad the diabetes is. Type two diabetes is the most common of the two. Most type two diabetics are adults, however with childhood obesity rates on an ever-increasing scale, type two diabetes has started being diagnosed in teens and children. There is a good percent of the type two diabetes population that doesn’t even know that they are diabetic. Unlike type one diabetes using injected insulin as a treatment, type two usually can be managed with proper diet and exercise. There are many effective ways that type two diabetics can manage their symptoms. Learning what and when to eat, and recognizing how to treat low and high blood sugar are important skills. There are many websites and cookbooks out there that can aid in learning the proper diet of a diabetic. Regular exercise cannot only manage your weight, but it also helps you lower blood sugar without the aid of medications. There are many signs and symptoms for diabetes and being aware and getting tested are the best ways to prevent or detect it.
A quick urine analysis can be done just to check for elevated blood sugar levels and distinguish whether it is type one or two diabetes. If you come up positive for high blood sugar the next stage of testing is a few blood tests. First is the fasting blood glucose level. This