Three Interesting Facts About Diabetes Mellitus
Diabetes mellitus, affectionately referred to as just adiabetesa by almost everyone who has ever heard of the disease, is a condition you would not want to wish upon your worst enemy. Aside from forcing you to change almost every aspect of your lifestyle (say goodbye to All-You-Can-Eat wing night), it could lead to a series of unfortunate complications, such as having your foot cut off and that pesky little thing known as death. Terrifying aspects of a disease that can strike without warning aside, here are some interesting facts overlooked by almost everyone.
Have you ever wondered what the mellitus tacked on to the end of diabetes actually means? Aside from being a fancy word to make it sound more medical-y, it actually has an interesting albeit slightly disturbing history to it. In 1675, a doctor by the name of Thomas Willis, added the term, which is the Latin word for ahoney,a due to the taste of the urine diabetes patients being deemed sweet. Although not the first person to notice this (it’s been known for well over a thousand years), the reason for its honey-sweet taste is courtesy of Matthew Dobson, who in 1776 discovered its source to be a build-up of a specific kind of sugar in the urine and blood.
Diabetes is all about urine. But what does that name actually mean? Like many medical terms, its history and meaning lies in the language of the ancient Greeks. It was coined by Aretaeus the Cappadocian, a second-century AD physician who noticed that those with the condition urinated frequently and gave off the appearance of aleaking water.a He named it diabetes, which comes from the Greek word I’IIIIIIIII, which when parsed is composed of the prefix adia,a meaning aacross or apart, a and abainein,a meaning ato walk or stand.a When put together it means ato straddle,a with the noun form meaning aone who straddlesa (diabA”tA”s).
To be more specific, the word also means acompassa or asiphon.a It wasn’t until 1425 when the term adiabetea was used to describe the condition in English.
Despite being highly manageable today, the ancients who first discovered the condition considered it to be an automatic death sentence. According to Victor Corneliu Medvei in his book The History of Clinical Endocrinology, despite Aretaeus’ attempts at treating the disease, he considered a diagnosis of this new condition to result in a life that is ashort, disgusting and painful.a
In short, ancient conceptions of diabetes can be summed up in two words: urine and pain.
More great information on diabetes can be found at On Top of My Diabetes.
Frequently Asked Questions
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QUESTION:
I need some facts about diabetes can someone give me some?
I need FACTS like what does diabetes do to you-
ANSWER:
First of all, there’s two types of diabetes, which is something that a lot of people miss.Type 1 (formerly called juvenile-onset) is basically that your pancreas doesn’t function correctly anymore. Your Isles of Langerhans, which are special cell clusters in the pancreas, do not produce insulin. In some cases, the body’s own immune system destroys the Isles of Langerhaans. This is NOT caused by diet! The cause is currently unknown, but it is NOT preventable.
Type 2 (formerly called adult-onset) is the more common one nowadays. This is the sort that’s caused by insulin resistance — if your diet contains severe excesses of sugar, eventually insulin will no longer be able to regulate your blood sugar effectively.
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QUESTION:
please answer me about diabetes facts?
He is not fat at all. Did he eat too much sugar? Then why didn’t he become fat? He mentioned he was taking something called inusin. How much inusin does he need to drink every day? What is inusin? Does diabetes hurt? Is it contagious?-
ANSWER:
You don’t need to be fat to get diabetes. Eating sugar doesn’t cause diabetes. You don’t drink insulin…you take through an injection. The amount of insulin injected each day depends on what you eat/how much exercise you get daily/how you’re body responds to it, basically insulin is the “key” to “unlock” the cells in your body so that glucose can enter the cell and be used for energy, no diabetes doesn’t hurt, no its not contagious.
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QUESTION:
Any weird, random, or just plain interesting facts about diabetes?
to make my health report more interesting?-
ANSWER:
yes the urine has a very distinctive sugar content, but they used dogs to taste it… phew. and their breath has a (i think, you might want to google it) a sweet odour
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QUESTION:
what are some interesting facts about diabetes?
i am at a blank. seems pretty boring to me-
ANSWER:
The pancreas consists of two different types of cells. The beta cells, and the alpha cells. Beta cells produce the hormone insulin, and alpha cells produce the hormone glucagon.The cells of the body need glucose as a form of energy to survive. After eating a meal, the body eventually breaks down the meal into simpler parts that the body can use. Glucose is one of these parts and is in anything people eat. The glucose is then released into the bloodstream so it can be used by the cells of the body. Now the blood glucose level has just gone up. However, the cells of the body cannot receive this glucose. This rise in blood glucose level triggers the beta cells of the pancreas to release insulin into the bloodstream, where it latches onto the cells which then allow the cells to receive and metabolize the glucose, which then brings the blood glucose level down to normal. Any excess glucose in the blood that is not used by the cells are either excreted or stored in the liver in the form of glycogen.
When the body does not get any glucose from food for an extended period of time, blood sugar levels start to lower, causing a person to feel lethargic. This triggers the alpha cells in the pancreas to release the insulin glucagon, which signals the liver to release the stored glycogen, which will be converted back into glucose for the body’s cells to use. The whole cycle then starts again with the beta cells releasing insulin until blood glucose levels stabilize.
There are two forms of diabetes. Type I diabetes and Type II diabetes.
In type I, the insulin producing beta cells are either destroyed by an auto-immune disease or because they have been “worn out”. What causes the beta cells to wear out is the perpetually high levels of glucose in the body. This keeps forcing the beta cells to work harder to produce more insulin which eventually causes them to die from exhaustion. The blood glucose then remains at high levels because there is no insulin to open up the cells to receiving glucose.
Type II diabetes is when the cells of the body become resistant to insulin which cause it to be unable to receive the glucose in the blood and so it remains in the blood at high levels. Type II diabetes is usually caused by perpetually high blood glucose levels, which signals the body to produce even more insulin. This causes the cells of the body to be constantly exposed to insulin, and it eventually becomes resistant to it, and consequently unable to receive glucose from the bloodstream.
Both types of diabetes cause blood glucose levels to rise to dangerous levels. And so far, there is ABSOLUTELY NO CURE for any type of diabetes. There is only treatment for it. Sometimes even people with healthy lifestyles can develop any of the two types of diabetes due to genetics.
To treat patients with type I diabetes, genetically engineered insulin must be manually injected into the bloodstream via syringe during meal times. This is because there is no longer enough or any insulin being produced naturally by the body. However, a person can only handle a certain amount of this engineered insulin. Therefore, there are many foods that are high in sugar like fruits and desserts that a diabetic person cannot eat because doing so would require amounts of insulin that would not be possible to administer to the person safely.
To treat patients with type II diabetes, special medications must be taken that force the beta cells to produce even more insulin and/or to help the cells in the body to become more sensitive to insulin. Likewise, people with type II diabetes must carefully watch what they eat to prevent their condition from worsening.
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QUESTION:
12 facts about diabetes?
i know that this is really bad but i have been asked to find out 12 facts about diabetes and i cant find information about it anywere so im asking you guys. I need to know facts about the causes, symptoms and treatments for diabetes. really need “12″ facts. more facts are also good.-
ANSWER:
www.diabetes.orgThis is the website to the American Diabetes Association. It’s a wealth of information and can provide numerous facts about diabetes.
EMT
Type 1, insulin dependent, use an insulin pump, used to take 6 shots a day, have had my pump for 8 years
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