Diabetes is a chronic condition in which the blood sugar level is elevated, hence the name “diabetes mellitus“. In people without the disease, the pancreas or pancreas regulates that level with insulin: you eat, your body gets energy from that food, and after a while your blood sugar drops again. But in people with diabetes, insufficient insulin is produced or works that insulin is not good, so people with the condition have to adjust their blood sugar themselves.
More than 90 percent of patients have diabetes type 2, formerly known as “adult onset diabetes”. This mainly affects adults over the age of forty and is partly preventable, although risk factors also play a role. Treatment often consists of dietary requirements, sometimes medication, and insulin as the disease progresses.
However, five to ten percent suffer from it diabetes type 1, an autoimmune disease in which one’s own immune system attacks the pancreas. This variant is partly genetically determined and cannot be prevented. A healthy lifestyle is also not enough to keep the disease under control: patients must properly coordinate their diet and insulin (via injections). Half of those people are under the age of 18.
There are also other rarer forms of diabetes, such as gestational diabetes or diabetes due to harmful alcohol abuse.