Self-Managed Care for Type I and Type II Diabetes

Do you know what the most common serious health disorder in America is? You might be surprised to find that it happens to be diabetes. Here’s something else you might not have known. Diabetes is the number one cause of both blindness and kidney failure. Of course, referring to the ailment as diabetes is somewhat misleading as there are actually two different types of diabetes.

Type I diabetes used to be known as juvenile-onset diabetes because it showed up most often during childhood or adolescence. Type I diabetes accounts for less than 10% of all diabetes cases in the US. In Type I diabetes the body is unable to produce insulin because the cells that produce that insulin, the beta cells, are destroyed due to an auto-immune reaction. The result of this lack of insulin can be dangerous; if a patient doesn’t take their insulin injection death can result in a matter of days. The common symptoms of Type I diabetes are fairly obvious for a doctor to pick up on: extreme or unusual thirst, an increased need to urinate, blurred or otherwise impaired vision and sudden and unexplained weight loss.