All About Diabetes: Symptoms, Causes, Types.

Diabetes is a serious disease. But the startling truth is that diabetes is reversible. Diabetes is the number one cause of chronic kidney disease (CKD).Recognizing diabetes symptoms can help you to prevent further devastating diabetes complications. Or, if you are a person in risk for developing diabetes, this can help you to prevent the diabetes onset. Anyway, keep in mind that you may not have all the symptoms of diabetes, maybe just only one diabetes symptom.

While talking about diabetes, you may be frightened from the idea that you may have it. Or maybe, you may have it in the future. You want to know if you are at risk to develop diabetes and anxiously you’re looking to find if you have any diabetes symptom.

Diabetes affects the manner in which the body handles carbohydrates, fats and proteins. If neglected, diabetes can have serious complications. The diabetic people have high blood sugar level. The blood sugar level is regulated by insulin – a hormone produced by the pancreas, which depends on your eating habits.

Diabetes is a serious disease. But the startling truth is that diabetes is reversible. Diabetes is the number one cause of chronic kidney disease (CKD). This disease is a condition where the body is unable to automatically regulate blood glucose levels, resulting in too much glucose (a sugar) in the blood. Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects as many as 16 million Americans.

Actually, there is no clear symptom for diabetes. The most common symptoms of diabetes are as follow:

– being all the time thirsty
– frequent urination
– increased hunger
– feeling all the time tired; having an excessive fatigue,

On the other hand, there are some other symptoms of diabetes that are prescribed as diabetes complications in fact. These symptoms are:

– vision changes;
– recurrent skin infections very difficult to heal;
– tingling or numbness you may feel in your extremities;
– gums disorders;
– Hair loss and many others.

There are two different types of diabetes.

Type I Diabetes (juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes): The reason for type I diabetes is due to pancreas unability to produce insulin.

Type II Diabetes (non insulin dependent diabetes or adult onset diabetes): This diabetes is a result of body tissues becoming resistant to insulin. It is usually hereditary.

Type 2 Diabetes is more common than Type 1 Diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a life-long disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood. Conditions associated with type 2 diabetes include hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia. Type 2 diabetes may account for about 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Up to two-thirds of people with type 2 diabetes have no symptoms. Obesity is the single most important risk factor for type 2 diabetes. An estimated 20% of all cases of new onset type 2 diabetes are in individuals between the ages of 9-19. The more you know about type 2 diabetes, the more you’ll be able to take the right steps to take control of your condition.

If neglected, diabetes can lead to various complications such as damage to the kidneys, heart disease, nerve damage, hypoglycemia (drastic reduction in glucose levels). Diabetes is a serious disease and there is no treatment of it. However, it can be brought under control by proper diabetic diet.

Exercises to Strengthen Your Heart

Cardiovascular diseases can be life-threatening. It is critical to keep a healthy heart and avoid the dangers of heart problems, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, or stroke. Making regular exercise a part of your daily routine for life and being physically active can go a long way in preventing most heart health

One of the most important organs in our bodies, the heart, is also a muscle that gets stronger and healthier with regular physical exercise. But you don’t have to be an athlete to be heart-healthy. You just have to make exercise a part of your daily routine for the rest of your life. Even walking for at least 30 minutes every day will be hugely beneficial to your long-term health.

While physical exercise is really important for the heart, not all exercises are created equal. Some exercises may focus on giving your body other benefits like flexibility or balance, but not dramatically contribute to helping you to keep a healthy heart for life.

Aerobic Exercises

 Aerobic exercise is identified as the most beneficial exercise for an individual’s cardiovascular health. It is also known as “cardio” and it helps improve circulation, which results in lower blood pressure and heart rate. It utilizes the repetitive contraction of a large group of muscles, making the person’s heart beat faster. It also increases aerobic fitness, which can be measured by a treadmill test. Aerobic exercise helps the heart pump better, aiding cardiac output.

30 minutes of daily aerobic exercise for a minimum of five days a week is considered the ideal. Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and for those already diagnosed with diabetes, helps them to manage their blood glucose level. Some examples of aerobic exercises are running, brisk walking, cycling, swimming, playing sports. The best type of aerobic exercises are heart-pumping activities conducted for a minimum of 150 minutes per week.

Resistance Training

 Resistance training is also known as strength work. It helps to strengthen the muscles, by making them work against a force or weight. People carrying more body fat can reduce fat more effectively and create leaner muscle mass with resistance training, as it has a more specific effect on body composition.

Combined with aerobic exercise, it can work even better as there are studies that support that combining both exercises (aerobic exercise and resistance training) can help raise HDL (good cholesterol) and minimize LDL (bad cholesterol). This reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular health problems.

 There are different forms of resistance training, including the use of free weights, resistance bands, weight machines, and even the person’s own body weight (e.g. yoga). Training 2-3 times a week can prove to be the most beneficial and effective for people who want to get fitter and healthier with resistance training.

Stretching (for Flexibility) and Balance Exercises

 It may not first appear that flexibility exercises or balancing exercises directly benefit an individual’s heart health. But both can go a long way in benefitting cardiovascular fitness, through how it benefits our musculoskeletal health. Flexibility helps us to do our exercises more effectively and avoid injuries. With sufficient flexibility, we may prevent joint pain, cramps, or unnecessary injuries that could potentially arise from more strenuous exercises like aerobic exercise or resistance training.

Flexibility exercises play an important role as they put our bodies in the right condition for conducting either aerobic exercises or resistance training without unnecessary strain or injury.

Balancing exercises on the other hand help to maintain stability and prevent falls that could likely happen also when conducting strenuous exercises. Achieving balance and improved flexibility are still very important in making sure our body can sustain the cardiovascular exercises it needs to stay fit and healthy.

Stretching exercises may not always be the most interesting, but they can be done in the comfort of your home with some videos from the internet, making them really convenient and easy to learn. Flexibility exercises and balancing exercises are both important in building up and strengthening our cardiovascular health.

Carbohydrates and Type 2 Diabetes

There is a much research that shows a low-carb diet leads to rapid and healthy weight loss. Human beings are overweight and obese more than ever before. Type 2 diabetes also happens to be much more of a problem now than it has in the past. The highly-processed meal plan that many living in modern, westernized countries consume regularly is also common.

It is no small coincidence that the simple carb profile of the Standard American Diet (SAD) is linked to overweight and obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, conditions that are largely avoidable by trading “bad” carbs for “good” carbohydrates.

Are All Carbs the Same?

In the 1970s and 80s Hollywood churned out “evil twin” TV series episodes by the dozens. From Knight Rider to Star Trek, Bonanza to The Bionic Man and a long list of soap operas, a mustache, beard or simple hairstyle change was all that was needed to turn a hero into his or her otherwise identical-looking villain.

What does that have to do with carbohydrates and diabetes?

Hollywood’s evil twin episodic device still popular today shows us that two similar or even identical appearing entities can be vastly different. This is true with carbohydrates. There were the good and bad twins played by David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider, and there are good and bad carbohydrates.

Simple Carbs Are Mostly Bad Carbs

Simple carbohydrates are absorbed quickly into your bloodstream. They have a very simple molecular composition, so your body can take them apart very easily. In other words, the good and not so good chemicals, nutrients and compounds in simple carbohydrates (bad carbs) are rapidly absorbed by your body.

This is a good thing for those healthy nutrients and vitamins that are found in simple carbohydrates. The problem is, due to their molecular construction, there aren’t very many essential nutrients your body requires in most foods that are full of bad carbs. Processed, simple carbohydrates found in soft drinks, white rice, white bread, cookies and a long list of processed foods are full of sugar but contain few of the nutrients needed for health.

Sugar is a simple carb, and is rapidly processed by your body. It enters your bloodstream and is broken down to glucose. Glucose is needed by your body to produce energy so that you can walk, and think, and move and exist. However, when you get too much glucose in your bloodstream, you cause a blood sugar spike, something that diabetics and non-diabetic individuals should look to avoid.

With many of the processed and sugar-laden “foods” on offer today, it takes only a very small amount to cause elevated and unhealthy blood glucose levels. Reduce or eliminate the bad carbohydrates in your diet and replace them with good carbs, and you have taken a big and healthy step to diabetes management.

Complex Carbs Are the Good Carbs

Complex carbohydrates are more difficult to break down. This is a more natural process, and how our bodies are designed or have evolved to digest the foods we need for optimum health. They usually contain plenty of healthy nutrients, minerals, enzymes, vitamins and other natural goodies your body craves and needs.

Complex carbohydrates are often plant-based foods that are also high in fiber. Fiber is recommended for diabetes management, as it helps regulate a healthy body weight, lowers cholesterol levels, controls blood sugar levels and reduces your risk of developing heart disease.

Because of their complex construction, these good carbs take longer for your body to digest. This makes you feel full longer after you are through eating complex carbohydrate foods. This can lead to a reduced daily consumption of calories and assist with body weight management which is important to both diabetic and non-diabetic individuals.

Complex carbohydrates are in abundance in fruits and vegetables, nuts and whole grains.

Eat these foods fresh and raw whenever you can. Even steamed, boiled or broiled, fruits and vegetables will deliver healthy complex carbohydrates and essential minerals and nutrients your body needs to prevent diabetes development, as well as effectively manage diabetes if you are diagnosed. Plant-based diets have even proven successful in reversing diabetes, so start getting more of these healthy carbohydrates in your system today, and learn to shun the sugar treats.