The Coming Tsunami of Diabetes: Ways to Avoid It
What is diabetes?
Diabetes mellitus is a disease characterise by having high blood sugar.
Normally, our body makes insulin whenever we eat and the blood sugar starts to rise. The insulin makes sure that the sugar goes into the cells of our body use or stored, and prevents the liver from making too much sugar. In individuals with diabetes, there is not enough insulin around to do that.
What causes type 1 diabetes?
There are 2 types of diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the body’s white cells destroy the insulin-making cells in the เล่น UFABET ผ่านมือถือ สะดวกทุกที่ ทุกเวลา pancreas. So the patients cannot make much insulin at all, and they need insulin injection for life. It is thankfully very rare, accounting for about 5% .
What causes type 2 diabetes?
Type 2 is believed to be a disease of over-nutrition, and is related to an urbanised lifestyle and increasing obesity.
It is believed that each of us have a definite amount of fat storage capacity. When that capacity is exceeded by chronic over-nutrition (eating too much and always sitting around), the body does not want any more additional fat, and becomes resistant to insulin.
At first, the pancreas makes more insulin to overcome the insulin resistance. However, the pancreas eventually fails to do that and the sugar starts to rise, causing pre-diabetes (impaired fasting glucose or impaired glucose tolerance). At the same time blood triglycerides (fat in the blood) and free fatty acids start to rise in the blood.
Both the increased sugar and the free fatty acids poisonous to the pancreas. Causing a vicious cycle when the pancreas continues to be damaged. This further damages the pancreas and causes the sugar and free fatty acids to go higher!
Eventually, the increased insulin production is not enough to overcome the insulin resistance, and the patient develops diabetes. By the time diabetes occurs, only 50% of the pancreas function is left.
Diabetes and its complications
Uncontrolled diabetes causes many complications. The sugar sticks to everything in the body, from blood vessels walls, white blood cells, and all kinds of proteins, preventing their normal function. There are 2 main types of complications: big blood vessel disease and small blood vessel disease.
Big blood vessel disease refers mainly to heart vessel blockage causing heart attacks, brain vessel blockage causing strokes, and leg vessel blockage. Small blood vessels disease refers to damage to small vessels in the eye causing blindness, kidneys causing kidney failure, and nerves causing nerve damage.
The combined effect of nerve damage and blood vessel blockage cause bad foot infections, sometimes requiring amputations is the most common cause of end stage kidney failure requiring dialysis, accounting for 63.5% of all new cases in 2008. is the top cause of chronic ill health in Singapore.
Rising prevalence
About 11.3% of Singaporeans have, based on the National Health Survey 2010. It is estimate that by the year 2030, 18.4% will develop. More alarmingly, half the people with in are not aware that they. As more people suffer from its accompanying complications such as blindness, kidney failure and amputation will increase.