By: Mujuthaba
According to WHO 5% of all deaths caused globally is due to diabetes, and of all the diabetic cases, 90% is type-2 diabetes. I’m sorry to start on a negative note on the issue, but the worst thing is that type-2 diabetes is a prevailing killer while it can be easily prevented. Let me try to explain the disease in plain terms.
Diabetes, or ‘hakuru-macchah dhiun’ in local terms, is a collective term for three different conditions. They are type-1 diabetes, type-2 diabetes and gestational diabetes. After you take a meal, your blood extracts sugar (glucose) from the meal. This sugar in the blood would need to go into the skeletal muscles and other vital organs.
To make this blood sugar to get into those tissues (or lower the blood sugar), a hormone named ‘insulin’ is released into the blood. Insulin ‘tells’ the tissues to accept the sugar, only then the sugar is accepted by the tissues. Diabetes is caused when either the hormone insulin isn’t produced or the tissues doesn’t or cannot ‘listen’ to insulin.
Type-1 diabetes is caused when insulin is not produced by the body, which is why the patient needs to rely on insulin injections. This disease is commonly due to genetic factors and patients are diagnosed as a child. Type-2 diabetes is caused commonly due to the muscle not ‘listening’ to the released hormone insulin, which is mostly prevalent in obese and elderly individuals.
Type-2 diabetes is controlled and prevented through life-style changes such as taking up exercise and modifying one’s diet. The sugar from the blood is extremely important for the skeletal muscles and other organs for their function. The sugar from blood is the major fuel for their functioning.
After the tissues starve of their sugars, the tissues become frail, impairing their function. This is why diabetic patients loose a lot of muscle mass during the course of the condition. Following the disease; kidney failure, impaired functioning of the limbs, heart diseases, blood vessel conditions and loss of vision is very common. In short, this is not a bull-crap disease.
Excess fat in the body (especially surrounding the muscles/organs and in the muscles), prevents the hormone insulin to activate the tissues to take in sugar in the blood. This is why controlling the weight is extremely important to prevent from type-2 diabetes.
I have explained that the hormone insulin is the reason why the sugar flowing in the blood gets accepted by the tissues. Well, there is another important factor that makes the tissues to accept sugars, EXERCISE. Exercise creates the tissues to work so hard, that the tissues would accept the sugar in the blood without any hormone or any other factor. This is why exercise is the therapeutic treatment for diabetic patients prescribed by doctors or other medical practitioners.
In part-2 of this article I will explain how exercise itself ensures that type-2 diabetic patients can live a normal life. I will present the type of exercise prescription for type-2 diabetic patients, diet recommendations and the limitations of training in the next article. Since this disease is really close to me, it is extremely important that the knowledge on the issue is passed on accurately.
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