Diabetes what is it?

Diabetes as a disease is more common than HIV/AIDS or even cancer of any kind; for example in the whole world people who were living with diabetes were  425 million according to the International Diabetes Federation(IDF) report of 2017. If you compare recently with only 37.7 million who were living with HIV/AIDS in 2020¹

Most people do not understand what diabetes is. And more still, most people who have diabetes do not know they have it. About 50 % of people with diabetes in the world do not know that they have diabetes and this percentage is higher in low-income countries. According to the IDF, 69% of those with Diabetes in the low-income world do not know they have Diabetes. This is because most symptoms of Diabetes especially Type 2 Diabetes, show up long after the onset of the disease.

So what is diabetes?

Diabetes is an excess fuel problem so to speak, let’s say you have a machine like your car, you pump in fuel and the machine just cannot use the fuel. Sugar is the fuel of our bodies, and this fuel comes from the food we eat. Over 90% of the food we eat is full of this fuel glucose also known as sugar.

Diabetes occurs when your body cannot use properly all the sugar you eat and this sugar just stays in your blood a condition called hyperglycemia(increased blood sugar) in the medical language.

A metabolic disorder

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder where the body fails to utilize well its fuel, sugar. And this results from two things;

So these two result In the excess fuel problem I talked about. Sugar becomes too much in blood and this is a serious problem for the whole body. Naturally, our body cells do not like having too much Sugar around them, it damages them.

Sugar is a chemical and too much of it becomes poison. The normal Sugar in blood should be less than 126mg/dl (7mmol/l) when one has not eaten for at least 8 hours, or it should be less than 200mg/dl(11.1 mmol/l) 2 hours after a meal containing enough Sugar.²

Diabetes then is a  disease condition that results when the sugar in the blood is chronically above 126mg/dl. And this, like any other poison kills body cells slowly and silently and if left unchecked can create havoc in the most vital organs of the body like your kidneys and the brain.

the good news

The great news is that some types of diabetes are largely preventable. Yes! You can comfortably and consistently prevent your body from suffering from too much sugar in your blood.

If you want to prevent diabetes or even control it when it has already started all you need is to know the right and appropriate diabetes information.

 At dimpe-diabeteshealthpro.com we are dedicated to providing you with the diabetes information you need in a comprehensive and easily understandable format.

sources

• Zimmet Paul, D. R. A. et al (2015) Diabetes Mellitus Textbook of Diabetes Mellitus. Fourth edition Edited by K. G. M. M. A. DeFronzo Ralph A, Ele Ferrannini, Paul Zimmet. wiley Blackwell.