Normal Blood Sugar Levels and Diabetes

So much in the life of a person with diabetes revolves around blood sugar levels and that is especially the case for the diabetic who is having difficulty in bringing blood sugars down to within a range that is close to normal. Visit this link for a summary and the accepted range values of normal blood sugar levels.

The conventional medical advice to reduce blood sugar levels is to follow the three main pillars of diabetes management and control that involve:

• Dietary modification
• Exercise
• Weight Loss

Even after following that advice in full or part, many diabetics will need to depend on medically prescribed diabetes drugs and possibly, in some cases, insulin injections.

Diabetes explained

Diabetes is a serious disease that results from excess sugar circulating in the blood. This occurs because of a malfunction in the body’s system that normally is able to process and use the blood sugars as fuel that is needed by the cells of the body to carry out their own multitude of metabolic activities. The sugars are carbohydrates, in the form of glucose, a simple sugar, and are derived from the foods eaten each day and are essential, together with the other nutrients, the proteins, fats, water, vitamins, and minerals, to support life.

Forms of diabetes

There are three main forms of diabetes, called Type-1, Type-2, and Gestational Diabetes.

Type-1diabetes, affecting no more than 10 percent of the diabetic population, is an autoimmune disease that usually develops in children and young adults, although it can occur much later in life. Type-1 diabetes was formerly referred to as juvenile diabetes and results from the organ in the body, known as the pancreas, becoming unable to produce insulin, a hormone that is essential to aid the take-up of sugar from the blood into the body’s cells.

Type-2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes involving about 90 percent of all diabetes cases. As described above, in type-2 diabetes there is an impairment in the absorption of sugars from the blood into the body’s cells. This may be due to a lack of sufficient insulin production by the pancreas or it may be due to the resistance to insulin by the cells, and perhaps it is sometimes a combination of both of those factors.

Gestational diabetes is a usually temporary form of diabetes that occurs in women only when they are pregnant. With proper medical supervision the normal outcome is a healthy birth and the diabetic condition ends with the baby’s arrival. It is estimated that this form of diabetes only occurs in about 5 to 8 percent of pregnancies, although like all types of diabetes it is becoming more frequently diagnosed. Gestational diabetes affects higher numbers of pregnant women from some population groups, especially African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and some people of  South Asian descent. For an additional insight into this topic, check out Blood Glucose Levels in Pregnancy.

The sad statistics of diabetes
Type-2 diabetes is a serious disease that can potentially lead to several major health problems, some life threatening. To list a few of the grim outcomes of the complications of diabetes, and  to point out what many diabetics are facing, consider the following, obtained from publications of the major diabetes associations and government health authorities such as the Center for Disease Control:

• Diabetic adults suffer heart disease death rates at about 2 to 4 times higher than do non-diabetics.
• A diabetic’s risk of stroke is about 2 to 4 times higher than in non-diabetics.
• Diabetes leads in causing new cases of blindness in people 20 years and over.
• Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure.
• Diabetics represent over 60 % of all amputations (other than accident victims).
• Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S. and diabetes contributed to 233,619 deaths in 2005, the latest year for which data was available.

Why do some people become type-2 diabetic?
It seems that heredity plays little or no part in developing diabetes. But lifestyle does. The disease has been known to exist for millennia but in modern times it is associated with the growing affluence of a western lifestyle and is now being diagnosed in epidemic numbers in many countries of the world. A slight oddity perhaps, is that India, a country often thought of as much less affluent, calls itself the diabetes “capital” of the world because of the large numbers of its population who are known diabetics, of course, India is the second most populous country in the world.

Some factors that can lead to higher than normal blood sugar levels and the development of diabetes are:

• Obesity
• A high fat and carbohydrate rich diet
• Lack of exercise and physical exertion
• A sedentary way of life, much the way of life of many Americans.

So what can be done to prevent higher than normal blood sugar levels?

What must be done may be simple to identify but its prevention is difficult to achieve for many. That is because it means giving up so many of the pleasures of eating and a comfortable and easy way of living, But if diabetes does develop, then necessary steps similar to its prevention will have to be taken anyway –  so better to begin acting now with the chances that the worse can be prevented. And even when the diabetic condition is brought under control and is well-managed, it does diminish somewhat the quality of life. As listed above, the solution lies in dietary modification, exercise, and weight loss.

If diabetes is diagnosed, then what happens?

When diabetes does occur, and after the doctor and supporting healthcare professionals have provided the initial advice and direction, there is a lot more to learn about diabetes, it is just too difficult to understand everything when first diagnosed.

It is necessary to become familiar with the personal efforts needed to take care of the condition, the day-to-day management of diabetes is the responsibility of the individual diabetic. It takes time to gain experience as the various aspects of the disease are dealt with –  and it is useful to know how fellow diabetics have handled similar situations.

For general information about a wide range of diabetes subject matter, check out the List of  Topics at my sites, where I provide information in as accurately and unambiguously as I can, much of it gained from my own experience and research as a diabetic.

I was first diagnosed about 20 years ago as a type-2 and that at that time it was much to my surprise. Here are other links to articles on my websites, first Normal Blood Sugar Levels, and then Factors in Planning a Diabetic Menu, and lastly: Diabetic Food List Plus. The Plus refers to matters not really connected with food that I like to cover.

Return to List of Topics

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