Diabetes - an overview

Essay by SugarLipsCollege, UndergraduateA, October 2002

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Contents

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,