Diabetes
Diabetes is the leading cause of heart disease, kidney disease and strokes, and its other complications include blindness, amputation, impotence and nerve damage. It's also highly preventable.
Diabetes works like this: Your digestive system turns brunch into glucose the form of sugar your body uses for energy and sends it into the blood stream. When the glucose hits your pancreas ( that's a large gland located near your stomach) it produces insulin, a hormone, and sends it into your cells, where it can be used for rebuilding muscle, for keeping your heart pumping and your brain thinking. But over time, your bad habits take a toll. Over eating, particularly eating high-glycemic index foods, floods your body with massive amounts of glucose time and time and time again. Insulin can become overwhelmed when its asked to do too much all at one time and eventually it burns out. Insulin loses its ability to tell cells how to properly utilize the glucose in your blood. A condition known as insulin resistance. After several years, the pancreas gets fed up with producing all the ineffective insulin and begins to produce less than you need.
This is type 2, or adult-onset diabetes. (Given that poor diet is the major risk factor, its no surprise that 80% of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight) Glucose builds up in the blood, overflows into the urine, and passes out of the body. Thus, the body loses its main source of fuel even though the blood contains large amounts of glucose. Two bad things happen: First, you start to lose energy and your body starts to have trouble maintaining itself. You feel fatigue and unusual thirst, and you begin to lose weight for no apparent reason: you get sick more often, and injuries are hard to heal, because your body is losing its ability to maintain itself. Second, the sugar that is hanging around in your blood begins to damage the tiny blood vessels and nerves throughout your body, particularly in your extremities and vital organs, blindness, impotence, numbness and heart damage ensue. Its not all doom and gloom. Diabetes is a relatively preventable disease. Exercise and eating right are the two best ways to manage it.
