Diabetes isn't much fun. It's a disease that tends to make a stressful life even more stressful. Diabetics must worry about all of the things that we all worry about and that cause us stress: job, home, school, family, friends, etc. But then diabetics also must worry about things like blood sugar level, testing, injecting insulin or taking medication, what to eat, when to eat, getting enough exercise, taking care of their feet - the list goes on and on. Does diabetes cause stress? You bet!
Type 2 diabetes is usually diagnosed in people who are 40 years old or older. Most often these people are (a) obese and (b) sedentary. Forty + obese + sedentary is a recipe for diabetes.
Now there's nothing we can do (or would want to do) about turning 40 years old and growing older, but there IS something we can do about obesity and lack of physical activity.
Juvenile diabetes is also called insulin-dependent diabetes. It is most often referred to as Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is usually diagnosed in children or young adults. Type 1 diabetes is a condition in which the pancreas does not produce insulin. Insulin is a necessary hormone that the body uses to control glucose levels in the blood. When the pancreas doesn't produce insulin, blood glucose levels become too high; and glucose levels that are too high play havoc with the human body.
There is no "diabetes diet." There's no one-size-fits-all diet that all diabetics should follow. There are, however, nutritional guidelines that your doctor or the nutritionist that the doctor recommends will give you.
For many years, the American Diabetes Association had advocated that diabetics follow the guidelines of their Diabetic Food Pyramid. This food pyramid advocates that a great percentage of the diabetic diet consist of carbohydrates like grains and starchy vegetables.
What causes diabetes? There's no "cure" for diabetes, and there is no single "cause" of diabetes, either. There's an abundance of theories, though.
Type 1 diabetes is believed to be caused by genetics poor diet (malnutrition) and environment (virus affecting pancreas). If there's a history of Type 1 diabetes in a family, the risk factor is far greater than if there is no family history of Type 1 diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas does not secrete insulin
