Diabetes occurs when a person's body has trouble processing carbohydrates. Because of this all diabetics have to eat a careful diet that limits the amounts of carbohydrates that they consume.
Carbohydrates, as we all know from the Atkins diet, are sugars but they're not just found in candy and soda. Starches are a form of sugar and are found in foods like bread and pasta, fruits contain a kind of sugar called fructose, while milk products include another sugar called lactose.
When we eat all of these carbohydrates, our bodies break them down into the simplest form of sugar possible, which is called glucose. Unlike healthy individuals, diabetics' bodies can't control how much glucose is in their blood stream. That means they can't remove it from their blood when it gets too high or release more from their livers when it drops too low.
Doctors divide cases of diabetes into two types based on their severity.
Type I
Simply put, type I diabetes occurs when your pancreas does not create any insulin. Insulin is a hormone that causes your cells to absorb the glucose out of your blood. That means that whenever a type I diabetic eats any sugar, the glucose level in their blood rises and they aren't able to get it back down. Very high glucose levels can be fatal and lower levels still cause long term problems with many organs, primarily the kidneys and the heart.
In order to treat this, most type I diabetics take injections of artificial insulin. Dosage has to be carefully controlled, however, because we need a certain amount of glucose in our blood to keep functioning properly. If a diabetics' glucose levels drop too low, their bodies will start to shut down, and they can slip into what is called a diabetic coma.
Type II
In type II diabetes, the pancreas still produces some insulin, but not enough to process carbohydrates properly. In some cases, insulin is produced but the person's cells stop responding. This is called insulin resistance and it means that the pancreas has to create more and more insulin just to get the same results. Eventually, the pancreas “burns out” and can't produce enough. Insulin resistance appears to be linked to obesity which is why people are told to keep a close watch on their diet and exercise to ward off diabetes.
In some cases, type II diabetics are able to control their disease simply by watching what they eat and keeping an active work-out routine. More severe type II diabetics are prescribed drugs that stimulate the pancreas to produce more insulin or to lower their cells' insulin resistance. Our bodies store extra glucose in the liver, and some drugs limit the amount of glucose that it can release into the blood. Unfortunately, most cases of type II diabetics become more severe over time, resulting in the use of artificial insulin.
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