Living with Diabetes

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Recommended: Describing life as a diabetic

Life with diabetes can be difficult. A diabetic person must eat the right healthy foods, exercise and check their blood sugar levels daily. If someone with diabetes does not properly care for the disease it can be detrimental to their overall health and have grim consequences later in life. Some people may need to take insulin shots, others may just need oral medication, but either way, it is a way of life that cannot be ignored.

RQ1 what is diabetes? Glucose is produced in the liver and insulin is produced in the pancreas, insulin helps the body break down the sugar in the blood stream. Insufficient insulin means the that the liver is producing masses amounts of sugar and the cells in the body are not absorbing it, insulin helps this process. There are two classifications of diabetes, type I diabetes is completely insulin dependent, this means that the pancreas does not make any insulin at all and the diabetic must take insulin injections to survive, type I diabetes is usually diagnosed early in life and is really uncommon, making up less than 0.5 of the world’s population. Type II diabetes is the second kind, this is where the pancreas is producing insulin but not quite enough to properly defend the body against the extra sugars. Between 90-95% of diabetics have type II diabetes. It is the most common but is usually diagnosed later in life. It is known as maturity onset diabetes.

RQ2 how do you know you are in control? Diabetics need to see their endocrinologist (a doctor that specializes in diabetes, since it is a disease of the endocrine system) every six months, less often if their disease is out of control. There is a test that must be done called the A1C test. This checks the blood over a three month period and tells the ...

... middle of paper ...

...levels a few times a day, to eating right and administering injections, it has to be done to maintain a healthy body and not end up in the hospital with kidney failure or one foot lighter. The trick is to take care of the disease before it races out of control.

Works Cited

Diabetes. (2003). In The Cambridge Historical Dictionary of Disease. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/cupdisease/diabetes

Patricia McLean, H. (n.d). Oral medications. (care for type II diabetes patients). RN, 58(5), 34. Retrieved from Gale: Academic OneFile (PowerSearch) database.

http://www.medhelp.org/NIHlib/GF-310.html

http://diabetes.webmd.com/diabetes-types-insulin

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4567456_diabetes-cause-blindness.html

http://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/diabetes.cfm

http://ruralhealth.und.edu/pdf/diabetes.pdf

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