Let’s first discuss what diabetes is. The food you eat is broken down by the body into glucose. Glucose is a kind of sugar that is necessary for the body to survive. Glucose travels through your blood stream to your cells. Cells use the glucose for energy. For glucose to enter the cell it needs the help of insulin. When people have diabetes, there is a problem with the insulin. Sometimes there is no insulin. This is called Type I diabetes. In other cases there is insulin, but the body has trouble using it properly

The shots can be much more of a hassle. You have to draw the insulin into the needle and inject it into yourself two to five times a day. When you take shots there are a few different types of insulin that you can take, such as Humulin NPH (long lasting- works over a six-hour period and slowly peaks within three hours), Humulin Regular (fast acting- works over a three hour period and peaks within a half hour), and Humulin Humalog (fast acting- starts working right away). If you are taking anything other than Humalog you have to wait thirty minutes after taking the shot to eat.

If diabetes is not controlled then it can cause harmful effects to your body, effects that can last the rest of your life. Almost all of the complications of diabetes are caused by having too much glucose in the blood. Think about how sticky your fingers feel when you get maple syrup on them. A major problem, and cause of many health problems associated with diabetes, is that the small blood vessels that carry blood throughout the body get clogged up. This causes problems with circulation and leads to eye diseases (retinopathy) and kidney diseases (nephropathy). Too much glucose can speed up the normal hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) that occurs as you age. This decreases blood flow to the heart and to the brain, can cause a heart attack, or a stroke. Too much glucose can also damage nerve cells and delay, change, or halt electrical messages that your nerve cells send throughout your body. All these complications run a much higher risk in diabetics than in people without diabetes.

You will have to deal with the problems of high and low blood sugars. If your blood sugar is too high, you will need to give yourself extra insulin to lower it. Having high blood sugar over an extended period of time can cause damage to your body. If your blood sugar is too low, you will need to eat or drink something with high calories to bring your level back up to a normal range. There is a very fine balance that you must maintain like walking a tight rope. If your blood sugar goes too high and isn’t taken care of you can go into a coma. If your blood sugar is too low you can have seizures. Diabetes is a full time job!

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