To begin, diabetes in general describes an inability of the person's body to correctly produce and/or use the hormone insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced by beta cells that are on your pancreas. Your body uses insulin to move glucose (sugar) from food from the bloodstream into cells throughout the body where it is then used for energy.
Type 1 Diabetes, often called Juvenile Diabetes, is an Autoimmune Disease. What this means is that at some point, the body decided that those beta cells I mentioned weren't supposed to be there and the immune system attacks and kills off some or all of them. This can happen at varying speeds. Nobody knows why this happens. This can happen at ANY age. You can develop Type 1 Diabetes at 2, at 12, at 22, 52, etc.....it is not solely something that happens to children. With those beta cells gone, the body does not produce any insulin on its own and so the person MUST give themselves insulin in order to survive. No diet, no exercise, no pills will help.
Type 2 Diabetes used to be referred to as Adult Onset Diabetes. In my grandmother's generation it often didn't present itself until a person reached retirement age. Today we are seeing it in people of all ages, including children. Type 2 Diabetes is a Genetic Disease. A person can be in excellent health and eat a perfect diet and develop Type 2 Diabetes. A person can eat nothing but Twinkies and Chips, drink four liters of soda a day, never exercise, and be obese and still not develop Type 2 Diabetes; it's about genetics. The disease can present with no causal factors, it can just pop up at any time. However, it can also be brought out earlier through a lack of activity or by poor diet. It is not caused by diet or lack of activity, those are only factors that can cause it to present earlier than it MIGHT otherwise have developed. With Type 2 Diabetes a person's body becomes resistant to the insulin it produces, as well as possible changes in the amount of insulin production. Additionally, the liver, which produces it's own glucose (a survival mechanism meant to save a person who is starving) decides for unknown reasons to dump it's glucose into the blood stream when it doesn't really need to. Type 2 Diabetes has a lot of varying ways it can be treated. For about 13% of Type 2s it can be controlled through diet and exercise. The largest percentage of Type 2s control their Blood Glucose numbers with oral medications combined with diet and exercise. It is also controlled with insulin sometimes combined with the oral medications, sometimes not. Type 2 Diabetes is a progressive disease. A person can be perfectly controlled with only diet and exercise and still have to go on insulin at some point as their diabetes becomes progressively worse.
For some people, diabetes is developed due to traumatic injury to their pancreas, or due to other health conditions, all of which are beyond their control. Their treatment depends on how much, if any, insulin their bodies can produce.
Gestational Diabetes develops during a pregnancy and must be strictly controlled for the safety of the unborn baby. It often does not last beyond the pregnancy, if it's been properly controlled. However, having gestational diabetes is an indicator that Type 2 Diabetes could develop at some point.
LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults) or Type 1.5 diabetes is a type of diabetes that often presents as Type 2 Diabetes and is very often misdiagnosed as such. It is an autoimmune disorder where the beta cells of the pancreas are being attacked by the immune system but at a slower rate and therefore mimicking Type 2 at early stages. When the attack on the beta cells progresses and insulin production ceases it presents more as Type 1. There is a test that can be administered to determine if a person has Type 2 or Type 1.5 if the person and their doctor feel it's called for.
So! Those are the different categories of Diabetes, how they are developed, how they are generally treated.
A diabetic does not need to avoid eating sugar. It's not even "sugar" that a diabetic is watching anyway, it's all carbohydrates. Even so, a diabetic does not need to avoid carbs and SHOULD NOT avoid them. Carbs are a main source of fuel for our bodies and not eating them at all will actually cause a diabetic's blood glucose numbers to rise, not fall, due to that pesky thing I mentioned earlier about the liver. It's called a Liver Dump, and if you eat zero carbs your liver will dump glucose into your blood to save you. This raises blood glucose numbers. So avoiding all carbs accomplishes nothing and makes it all worse.
There are two types of diabetic emergencies: Blood Glucose going too low, and BG going too high.
When a person's blood glucose drops too low, also called Insulin Shock, it is a life threatening emergency and needs to be treated immediately. The signs that this is happening are similar to being drunk and often mistaken for that. Lightheaded, confusion, slurred speech, dizzy, nausea, hot flashes, cold sweats, loss of motor control, among others, and if not treated, loss of consciousness. To treat insulin shock, if the person is still awake, give them regular soda to drink, orange juice is an old stand-by, frosting is excellent. Many diabetics carry Glucose Tablets or Gel with them to administer when this happens. Some also have a kit with an injection to help if they lose consciousness. If a person is not conscious, if you have frosting, smear some along their gums but be cautious not to block the airway. Call 911 for assistance.
When a person's blood glucose rises beyond levels that their body is accustomed to, this is also very dangerous and can lead to a Diabetic Coma. The person often becomes lethargic and sleepy and may lose consciousness. There is nothing you can do to help them other than to call 911, as they need medical attention.
If you do not know which is the problem, too low or too high, you treat as if it's too low. If they're too low and you treat it you may save their life. If they're too high and you treat it as a low you will not be significantly changing anything.
ETA: emergency treatment is not something that should be administered without knowing the situation as it could make things worse. Your best move is to call 911 and do as you're told by the dispatcher. If you are a diabetic it's a smart plan to let the people around you know what to do if you feel off, or to make sure people you are often with know what to do for you in emergency situations. Wearing a Medic Alert bracelet is a smart move, too.
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So those memes and jokes like: Andrew had 10 candy bars and ate 8 of them, what does Andrew have? Andrew has diabetes! Those jokes may be amusing, but they are wrong and they do spread inaccuracies and misconceptions about diabetes. (I usually find them funny, but many diabetics are not so amused.)
And telling your diabetic cousin that maybe he shouldn't have any pie after Christmas dinner? Not cool. Unless you understand his diabetes, know what his blood glucose numbers are, know how he's medicated, and know what he should or shouldn't be eating, because he told you, then please keep your thoughts to yourself. You may be correct or you may be unaware and insulting.
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So those memes and jokes like: Andrew had 10 candy bars and ate 8 of them, what does Andrew have? Andrew has diabetes! Those jokes may be amusing, but they are wrong and they do spread inaccuracies and misconceptions about diabetes. (I usually find them funny, but many diabetics are not so amused.)
And telling your diabetic cousin that maybe he shouldn't have any pie after Christmas dinner? Not cool. Unless you understand his diabetes, know what his blood glucose numbers are, know how he's medicated, and know what he should or shouldn't be eating, because he told you, then please keep your thoughts to yourself. You may be correct or you may be unaware and insulting.
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