About Diabetes

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by high blood

glucose levels that result from defects in the body’s ability to produce and/or
use insulin. Not sure what that means? This is the place to find out more about
diabetes and how we at Yes2Life can help you.

Diabetes is a condition in which your body is unable to use the glucose from the food you eat. Glucose comes from foods such as breads, cereals, pasta,
rice, potatoes, fruits and vegetables. To use glucose, your body needs insulin.
Insulin is made by a gland in your body called the pancreas.

What happens in your body?

Our body cells need fuel to provide energy for living, breathing, seeing, and even thinking, just as a car needs fuel to drive. Our fuel comes from the food we eat, which is digested in the stomach and flows into the blood stream as glucose, a form of sugar. To get into the body cells, this glucose needs the assistance of a hormone called Insulin. If you have diabetes glucose will increase in the bloodstream - causing one’s blood glucose (sometimes referred to as blood sugar) to rise too high.

Normally a gland called the pancreas makes insulin, which carries the glucose in the blood into the cells. In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas produces very little or no insulin at all. As a result, the person cannot use the glucose in the food that he or she eats and the glucose levels in the blood rise.

What is Pre-diabetes?

The vast majority of patients with type 2 diabetes initially had pre-diabetes. Their blood glucose levels were higher than normal, but not high enough to merit a diabetes diagnosis. The cells in the body are becoming resistant to insulin.

Studies have indicated that even at the pre-diabetes stage, some damage to the circulatory system and the heart may already have occurred.

Symptoms of Diabetes

People with pre-diabetes and diabetes frequently experience certain non-specific symptoms. Some diabetics have no symptoms at all and the disease is discovered as a result of a routine blood test.

Symptoms include:

• being very thirsty
• frequent urination
• weight loss
• increased hunger
• blurry vision
• irritability
• tingling or numbness in the hands or feet
• frequent skin, bladder or gum infections
• wounds that don’t heal
• extreme unexplained fatigue