Diabetes
DiabetesContents
Introduction
Overview of Diabetes Type I
What is diabetes type I
Health implications of diabetes type I
Physical Activity
What is physical activity?
Why do we need physical activity in our lives?
Physical Activity and Diabetes (Epidemiology)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
For our seminar topic “physical activity and disease” we chose diabetes as the focus of our
research.
Since diabetes is such a complex disease with many different forms, we decided to focus on
diabetes type I. This is known as insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). This type of
diabetes includes people who are dependant on injections of insulin on a daily basis in
order to satisfy the bodies insulin needs, they cannot survive without these injections.
OVERVIEW OF DIABETES TYPE I
What is diabetes type I?
In order to understand the disease we firstly need to know about insulin. Insulin is a
hormone. The role of insulin is to convert the food we eat into various useful substances,
discarding everything that is wasteful.
It is the job of insulin to see that the useful substances are put to best use for our
well-being. The useful substances are used for building cells, are made ready for immediate
expenditure as energy and also stored for later energy expenditure.
The cause of diabetes is an absolute or lack of the hormone insulin. As a result of this
lack of insulin the processes that involve converting the foods we eat into various useful
substances does not occur.
Insulin comes from the beta cells which are located in the pancreas. In the case of
diabetes type I almost all of the beta cells have been destroyed. Therefore daily
injections of insulin become essential to life.
Health implications of diabetes type I
One of the products that is of vital importance in our bodies is glucose, a simple
carbohydrate sugar which is needed by virtually every part of our body as fuel to function.
Insulin controls the amount of glucose distributed to vital organs and also the muscles. In
diabetics due to the lack of insulin and therefore the control of glucose given to
different body parts they face death if they don’t inject themselves with insulin daily.
Since strict monitoring of diabetes is needed for the control of the disease, little room
is left for carelessness. As a result diabetic patients are susceptible to many other
diseases and serious conditions if a proper course of treatment is not followed.
Other diseases a diabetic is open to: Cardiovascular disease, stroke, Peripheral artery
disease, gangrene, kidney disease, blindness, hypertension, nerve damage, impotence etc.
Basically there is an increased incident of infection in diabetic sufferers. Therefore
special care needs to be...
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