What is Diabetes ? Diabetes Related Complications

What is diabetes?

Diabetes is a hormone related disease that occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or no insulin or when the body is not able to use the insulin. Insulin is a type of hormone that regulate blood sugar. Insulin hormone produced by Islets of Langerhans located within the pancreas. Insulin move sugar from the blood to your cells to store it or use it for energy.

What are the types of diabetes?

1) Type 1 Diabetes

2) Type 2 Diabetes

3) Gestational Diabetes

What is Type 1 diabetes ?

Type 1 diabetes is an insulin-dependent diabetes. It usually diagnosed in childhood. It is an autoimmune disease. It usually happens when your body’s immune system attacks on your pancreas with antibodies and damages it. As a result of it pancreas doesn't produce insulin. Usually genes are responsible for this type of diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes can damage tiny blood vessels in your eyes (called as diabetic retinopathy), nerves (called as diabetic neuropathy), and kidneys (called as diabetic nephropathy). People with type 1 have a grater risk of heart disease and stroke.

What is Type 2 diabetes?

Type 2 diabetes is a non-insulin-dependent. Middle-aged and older people are majorly affected of it. Since last 20 years it has become more common in children and teens, because of their overweight or obesity.

As per the WHO data About 90% of people with diabetes have type 2.

When you have type 2 diabetes, the pancreas normally creates some insulin. But sometimes it’s not enough and sometimes your body doesn’t use it or your cells don’t respond to insulin.

Type 2 diabetes is usually milder than type 1. But it can still cause major health complications, especially in the tiny blood vessels in your kidneys, risk of heart disease and stroke, nerves, and eyes.

What is gestational diabetes?

As the term is self-explanatory it is pregnancy related diabetes. It develops in some women when they are pregnant. As pregnancy usually causes some form of insulin resistance. That is why some women develops it during their pregnancy. It is usually spotted in middle or late pregnancy. Normally Gestational diabetes goes away after the baby birth. Women with gestational diabetes have greater chance of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.

It’s important to control gestational diabetes to protect the baby's growth and development.

What are normal blood glucose ranges?

As per The Global Diabetes Community:

Plasma Glucose Test	Normal	Pre-diabetes	Diabetes
Random	Below 200 mg/dl	N/A	200 mg/dl or more
Fasting	Below 100 mg/dl	100 to 125 mg/dl	126 mg/dl or more
Post-Prandial (After two hour of food)	Below 140 mg/dl	140 to 199 mg/dl	200 mg/dl or more
HbA1C test	Below 5.7 %	5.7 to 6.4 %	6.5 % or above

Diagnosis and Test:

Test for diabetes, machine for sugar test

1) Fasting plasma glucose testing: Here, Fasting means eating/drinking nothing except sips of water at least from last 8 hours. It is good to have the test in the morning. Check the result with above table.

2) Postprandial glucose testing: Postprandial glucose test is the blood glucose test to check the amount of glucose in the plasma after two hours of a meal. Check the result with above table.

3) HbA1C Testing: In all types of diabetes your doctor may suggest you to go for HbA1c test that is with interval of 2 to 3 months. HbA1c (glycated hemoglobin) test is average plasma glucose concentration, because red blood cells in the human body survive for 8-12 weeks before renewal, measuring glycated haemoglobin (or HbA1c) can be used to reflect average blood glucose levels over that duration and how well your blood sugar is controlled. Check the result with above table.

Chronic Complications with the Diabetes:

1) Complications to Eyes: People with diabetes develop retinopathy that is reduced vision or blindness. High blood pressure and high cholesterol accelerate retinopathy development. A regular eye checks and maintaining glucose and lipid levels close to normal can be helpful to manage it.

2) Complications to Heart: Continuous increased sugar level affects the heart and blood vessels and cause fatal conditions like coronary artery disease and stroke. Cardiac diseases are the most common reason of death in diabetic patient.

3) Complications to Nervous System: Hands and legs are among the most commonly affected areas. Here nerve damage is called as peripheral neuropathy. This may lead to pain, tingling, and loss of feeling. That is leading to serious infections and possible amputations. Other problem can be associated with digestion, erectile dysfunction and others.

4) Complications to Kidney: Kidney related disease is more common in people with diabetes than in those without diabetes. High level of blood glucose damage small blood vessels in the kidneys termed as diabetic nephropathy. It reduces the capacity of kidney to filter blood.

5) Complications to Pregnancy: Women with any type of diabetes should maintain normal blood glucose levels throughout the pregnancy to minimize complications like organ damage to the fetus. There is a higher risk to the fetus for developing diabetes in the future whose mother has uncontrolled diabetes.