Battling Diabetes

I am very excited about working on Battling Diabetes and would like to thank the HART-Empire Network for this opportunity. I have followed Julie E. Fletcher’s posts closely and really enjoyed this community. Many thanks to Julie for her hard work. She challenges me to dig deep to maintain the quality of this blog.

When I began the Battling Cancer blog I said that the subject is a facet of who I am. It doesn’t define me but it definitely shapes me and guides my life. The same is true of diabetes.

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Diabetes - An Introduction to Diabetes

Diabetes, a disease characterized by chronic high levels of glucose in the blood, is not the major problem it once was. Prior to the end of the 19th century, it might well have been a death sentence for many. Excess glucose can have a number of ill effects, including poor cut healing or kidney damage, even coma. With the advancement of monitoring and insulin delivery methods, it’s often now little more than another daily task to perform.

Though the underlying causes are not fully understood, diabetes results from either too little insulin being produced or ineffective use of it by the body. In Type 1 diabetes, for example, the islet cells of the pancreas fail to produce an amount of insulin adequate to allow blood glucose to enter cells where it’s used for energy. In Type 2, the cells may resist insulin’s action, once again leaving too much glucose in the blood.

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