Diabetes Defined - Type I and Type II Diabetes

The word diabetes is a familiar one with most people. Unfortunately, its familiarity stems from the fact that so many people have been afflicted with this disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that nearly 180 million people worldwide have diabetes. If current trends continue, by the year 2010, there will be nearly 250 million diabetics around the world.

The disease is characterized by the body’s impaired ability or failure to process glucose (a form of sugar) in the bloodstream because of the lack / absence of insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas that processes blood sugar into a form that the cells in the body can use for energy.

Without the proper processing of sugar, the body either becomes hyperglycemic (too much sugar) or hypoglycemic (too little sugar). Both are dangerous as it can make the body react in any number of ways such as weakened kidneys, impaired nervous system, loss of sight and in some extreme cases, coma.

Diabetes takes on two kinds of forms, and they differ from each other primarily through the means by which the disease is contracted.

The first type of diabetes (Type I) is contracted genetically. Most of the patients of this type are boys and girls of around 15 years old. It is because of this trend that experts have interchanged the term Type I diabetes with Juvenile Onset Diabetes.