Harvard Medical School Diabetes: A plan for living

Harvard Medical School Diabetes: A plan for living Review

Nearly 24 million Americans roughly one of every 13 people have diabetes, a disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood. More than 90% of them have type 2 diabetes, which occurs when the body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin (the hormone that enables cells to draw sugar from the blood for energy) and not enough insulin is produced to overcome the resistance. In fact, the number of adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has more than quadrupled since the early 1980s. As a result, many experts consider type 2 diabetes an epidemic a term once reserved only for infectious diseases. Consequently, this report focuses almost exclusively on type 2 diabetes, and includes only a brief explanation of the related, but far less common, type 1 diabetes, a disease that usually first appears during childhood or adolescence. This report describes the basics of how your body metabolizes sugar, how and when to monitor your blood sugar, and how to cope with both short- and long-term complications of diabetes, which include heart attacks and stroke, blindness, kidney failure, and amputation. It also includes detailed, updated information about weight loss strategies, medications, and alternative treatments for diabetes.