What is Diabetes Type 2?
As the U.S. population is steadily becoming more obese, the incidence of type 2 diabetes is increasing as well. Family history may play a part, but obesity is being found to be the most common factor among people with type 2 diabetes.
In fact, up to 90 percent of all diabetes cases are type 2 and 75 percent of those are found in people who are overweight. People with excess fat in the abdominal area are the most vulnerable to the disease.
What is glucose?
Your blood vessels always have sugar circulating up and down. Most of the sugar in your body is the kind we call glucose which main job is to supply your body with energy. In the process of your body breaking downs down glucose, it creates energy and release water and carbon dioxide.
Glucose is the fuel most tissues in your body use;actually it is the only fuel your brain can use. Your brain can survive without glucose for only a short time, so it directs your body to protect your glucose level, making sure it does not follow too low.
What are fatty acids?
The other fuel your body uses is fatty acids. Fatty acids differ from glucose in that they provide a source of fuel used only during longer periods of fasting. Fatty acids come from the fat you eat and are stored in your fat cells as triglycerides. The more fatty acids you store in fat cells, the more “visible” your energy reserves become.
Where does glucose need to go?
The glucose in your body comes from three major nutrients: fat, protein, and carbohydrate. About 10 percent of the fat and 50 percent of the protein you eat is eventually broken down into glucose (the rest is used for other purposes or stored in the body’s fat cells), but nearly 100 percent of the carbohydrate you eat is broken down into glucose.
Chewing and swallowing begins the digestive process of breaking down starches and large sugar molecules to glucose. The enzymes in your mouth and your intestines complete the breakdown. The glucose is then absorbed into the bloodstream and travel throughout the body.
The pancreas
The process requires the help of the pancreas. The pancreas is a gland located behind the stomach and next to the small intestine that helps the body with the absorption and digestion of food so that the body can get the nutrients it needs. The hormones produced by the pancreas, including glucagon, insulin, and somatostatin, are in charge of regulating nutrients and the energy used by your body.
Insulin is a hormone that plays many important roles in the body, but its primary task is to cause body cells to take in proteins, fatty acids, and glucose. Insulin is like a key that opens a door to the body’s cells, so the nutrients needed by the cells can get inside.
When a person who does not have diabetes eats any food, their blood glucose level rises; the beta cells detect this rise and release more insulin. The insulin then goes to the liver, telling the liver to make less glucose, andit also goes to the muscles and fat cells, telling them to allow more glucose.
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This allows nutrients from the recent eaten meal to enter and feed the body’s cells, it keeps blood glucose from rising too high even after eating, and it allows the glucose level to return to a normal level quickly.
When that same healthy person fasts, such as between meals or during sleep, the insulin levels fall, causing the liver to make more glucose to provide energy until the next meal.
In the person with diabetes, however, this feedback process doesn’t work properly. Insulin does not do its job. And the amount of glucose in the blood rises.
Detecting diabetes
In a person without diabetes, the body keeps the blood glucose level between meals in the range of 70 to 99 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl). After eating, the glucose level rises based on the type and the amount of the content of the meal, but does not exceed 139 mg/dl. It also quickly returns to the fasting, or between-meal range.
In a person with diabetes, the blood glucose level rises abnormally high after eating, takes much longer to come down, and doesn’t return to the normal range, even during periods of fasting. Therefore, to determine if you have diabetes, a doctor must test your blood glucose levels.
Diabetes type 2
Diabetes type 2 is the most common form of diabetes. It is estimated that up to 90 percent of the people who have diabetes have type 2. The cause appears to be resistance to insulin’s action and/or a deficiency of insulin secretion.
People with type 2 diabetes are usually over 35, are overweight, and have a family history of diabetes treated with diet or pills. Type 2 diabetes begins decades before diagnosis, with an increasing resistance to insulin. This increasing resistance is the result of genetics, weight gai, especially abdominal fat, decreased activity and aging.
The major site of insulin resistance is the muscle tissue, which normally uses more than 80 percent of the glucose taken into the body. Because of this resistance, the body’s insulin levels actually begin to increase. Eventually, both glucose and insulin remain high enough in the blood to produce symptoms, at which time the doctor will make a diagnosis of diabetes type 2.
Emilia Klapp, R.D., B.S.
www.TheDiabetesClub.com
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