What is diabetes?
Diabetes is about injections, prodding your fingers for blood 4, 5 or even 10 times a day to check your glucose levels and then the constant carbs counting for every meal. It’s all about how well you look after it to ensure you are as healthy as you can be, it’s about your family buying into the concept of eating foods with less sugar or using sweetener in tea and coffee instead of sugar. It's these little things that make all the difference.
Now we come to the tricky part of diabetes, that there are two types. T1 and Type 2 (T2), amongst even those people that actually know that there ARE two types, it is often limited to certain age brackets and T1 can often be referred to as ‘the bad one’. T1 Diabetes is generally the type that starts off in a young male or female, from new born to teens and even into your early 20’s. T2 is different and is common among many people who are sedentary, obese and those who are in the later years of their lives. There is also what we call Gestational Diabetes but that explanation is for another day!
Two diseases, one name!
#1 What is insulin? How does it affect you and your sugar levels
#2 Sugar can be your friend!
Now back to real workings of T1 Diabetes.
1) We only have our own immune system to blame for this as somehow it has mistakenly killed all the insulin-producing beta cells in your pancreas.
2) The lack of insulin in the blood stream means that the cells have no access to the glucose which allows us to go about our daily tasks.
3) The balance of glucose and insulin in our blood is gone, which leads to all kinds of problems which I mentioned above!
#3 Solutions to what and when we eat carbs (fast and slow release)
Mistakenly, if you don’t take enough insulin for what you have eaten or if you take insulin before you eat and then eat more than you allowed for, your sugar levels can and will get pretty high, pretty quick and you will feel no different to sugars at a regulated level. The joy of the DAFNE course which I spoke briefly about above trains you how to exactly carry out the counting of carbs.
#4 T1 and Sport
How your blood glucose reacts to exercise can depend on few things, the level of intensity, the duration you are active, and of course the changes that you have made to your doses – if any at all. Many people may suffer a low blood sugar during and most often after exercise, so basically keep an eye to your bloods for up to 24hours after exercising. Some sports or types of exercise may cause your blood sugars to drop at a quicker rate than others. However, if you see that your sugars have been low or on the verge of low before you exercise or head off to training it may be advisable to have a pre-exercise snack. At all times diabetics must carry some quick acting carbs with them to prevent passing out due to low sugars. One final thing it is a MUST to have a Glucagon Hypo-Kit in every nuck and cranny, have one at home, in your sports bags, the car and even in relations and friends’ houses!
4th Year BB (Hons) in Recreation and Sport Management Student