Unknown to many people, diabetes is actually a very common and chronic disease. But what is diabetes really? Now, to better understand the condition, diabetes is a disorder. It’s a disorder that affects the way that the body uses up the energy it gets from food. In a normal body, the sugar that is taken in breaks it down into glucose or a simple sugar. This is what circulates in the blood and it waits to go into the cells to be used up as fuel.
To better understand what is diabetes, we must also look at how this blood enters into the cells because they cannot do it alone. This is where insulin comes in. Insulin is a hormone and it is made in the pancreas. Insulin will help the glucose move into the cells so that the glucose can be used. A healthy pancreas means that a healthy amount of insulin is made. But with a condition like diabetes, this is not the case because insulin levels then go down and the glucose gets way too high.
So what is diabetes? There are actually two main kinds of the condition. There is type 1 diabetes and this is when a person cannot produce insulin at all. Then there is Type 2 diabetes where people can produce insulin but the cells do not respond to the insulin. In these two types of diabetes, glucose cannot move into the cells and high glucose levels are very dangerous to a persons well being.
What is diabetes mellitus? The word diabetes means siphon in Greek. Mel in Latin is a word that means honey. Now people with diabetes often urinate and have blood that is sweet because of the excess glucose. This is also how the term “Sweet Urine Disease” was also coined. And you may want to read our next article that is about the signs of diabetes and there we will explain to you how to spot the signs of diabetes.