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Diabetes
Diabetes mellitus is a condition that involves consistently high levels of blood sugar (glucose) due to either a lack of insulin or your cells not properly using insulin. Typically, when glucose in your blood increases, an organ called your pancreas is signaled to produce a hormone called insulin. Insulin signals to your cells throughout your body to absorb the glucose and burn it as energy.
There are several types of diabetes which
Type 1 is an autoimmune disease where one's immune system attacks the cells that produce insulin in the pancreas. People with Type 1 are insulin-dependent, meaning they rely on insulin as they are unable to produce it. The condition affects roughly 1.8 million Americans (or 5% of diabetics) and has been called juvenile-onset diabetes, as it usually presents early in children.
Type 2 is a condition where one's cells stop responding to insulin in the same way due to chronically high levels of blood glucose. Prediabetes is considered the early warning stage, characterized by elevated by not high enough levels of sugar in the blood. If left unmanaged, prediabetes can turn into diabetes. Currently, more than one-third of Americans have prediabetes.
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