Types Of Diabetes

Diabetes

It is a disorder of metabolism—the way the body uses digested food for energy. The digestive tract breaks down carbohydrates—sugars and starches found in many foods—into glucose, a form of sugar that enters the bloodstream. With the help of the hormone insulin, cells throughout the body absorb glucose and use it for energy.

If beta cells of the pancreas don’t produce enough insulin, or the body doesn’t respond to the insulin that is present, glucose builds up in the blood instead of being absorbed by cells in the body, leading to prediabetes or diabetes. Prediabetes is a condition in which blood glucose levels(fasting, post lunch) or A1C levels—are higher than normal ( HBA1C more than 5.7 %)but not(HBA1C more than 6.4%) high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. In diabetes, the body’s cells are starved of energy despite high blood glucose levels.

The two main types of diabetes are type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic illness characterized by the body’s inability to produce insulin due to the autoimmune destruction of the beta cells in the pancreas. Onset most often occurs in childhood, but the disease can also develop in adults in their late 30s and early 40s.

 Type 2 diabetes mellitus consists of an array of dysfunctions characterized by hyperglycemia and resulting from the combination of resistance to insulin action, inadequate insulin secretion, and excessive or inappropriate glucagon secretion produced by alfa cells of the pancreas.

The third type of diabetes is known as lean type or one and ½ syndrome – these people show signs of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

 A 4th type, gestational diabetes, develops only during pregnancy.

Other types of diabetes are caused by defects in specific genes, diseases of the pancreas, certain drugs or chemicals, infections,  malignancies and other conditions