Type 1 diabetes is a chronic disease. In people with type 1 diabetes, cells in the pancreas that make insulin are destroyed, and the body is unable to make insulin.
Insulin is a hormone that helps your body’s cells use glucose for energy. Your body gets glucose from the food you eat. Insulin allows the glucose to pass from your blood into your body’s cells.
When the cells have enough, your liver and muscle tissues store the extra glucose, also called blood sugar, in the form of glycogen. It’s broken down into blood sugar and released when you need energy between meals, during exercise, or while you sleep.
In type 1 diabetes, the body is unable to process glucose, due to the lack of insulin. Glucose from your food can’t make its way into the cells. This leaves too much glucose circulating in your blood. High blood sugar levels can lead to both short-term and long-term problems.

Symptoms

Causes

The exact cause of type 1 diabetes is unknown. However, it’s thought to be an autoimmune disease. The body’s immune system mistakenly attacks beta cells in the pancreas. These are the cells that make insulin. Scientists don’t fully understand why this happens.
Genetic and environmental elements, such as viruses, may play a role.

Treatment

If you receive a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, your body can’t make its own insulin. You’ll need to take insulin to help your body use the sugar in your blood. Other treatments may also hold some promise for controlling symptoms of type 1 diabetes.

Insulin

People with type 1 diabetes must take insulin every day. You usually take the insulin through an injection.
Some people use an insulin pump. The pump injects insulin through a port in the skin. It can be easier for some people than sticking themselves with a needle. It may also help level out blood sugar highs and lows.
The amount of insulin you need varies throughout the day. People with type 1 diabetes regularly test their blood sugar to figure out how much insulin they need. Both diet and exercise can affect blood sugar levels.

Metformin

Metformin is a type of oral diabetes medication. For many years, it was only used in people with type 2 diabetes. However, some people with type 1 diabetes can develop insulin resistance. That means the insulin they get from injections doesn’t work as well as it should.
Metformin helps lower sugar in the blood by reducing sugar production in the liver. Your doctor may advise you to take Metformin in addition to insulin.

Other Medicines

A new oral medicine may be on the horizon for people with type 1 diabetes. Sotagliflozin (Zynquista) is awaiting FDA approval. If it gets the green light, this drug will be the first oral medication designed to be used alongside insulin in people with type 1 diabetes.
This medicine works to lower glucose levels in the blood by forcing the body to expel it in urine and by reducing glucose absorption in the gut. Similar medicines exist already for people with type 2 diabetes, but none are approved for people with type 1.

Note: Medicines should be taken only after prescribed by doctors.

Diabetes is a chronic medical condition in which sugar, or glucose, levels build up in your bloodstream. The hormone insulin helps move the glucose from your blood into your cells, where it’s used for energy.
In type 2 diabetes, your body’s cells aren’t able to respond to insulin as well as they should. In later stages of the disease, your body may also not produce enough insulin.
Uncontrolled type 2 diabetes can lead to chronically high blood glucose levels, causing several symptoms and potentially leading to serious complications.

Symptoms

Causes

Insulin is a naturally occurring hormone. Your pancreas produces it and releases it when you eat. Insulin helps transport glucose from your bloodstream to cells throughout your body, where it’s used for energy.
If you have type 2 diabetes, your body becomes resistant to insulin. Your body is no longer using the hormone efficiently. This forces your pancreas to work harder to make more insulin.
Over time, this can damage cells in your pancreas. Eventually, your pancreas may not be able to produce any insulin.
If you don’t produce enough insulin or if your body doesn’t use it efficiently, glucose builds up in your bloodstream. This leaves your body’s cells starved for energy. Doctors don’t know exactly what triggers this series of events.
It may have to do with cell dysfunction in the pancreas or with cell signaling and regulation. In some people, the liver produces too much glucose. There may be a genetic predisposition to developing type 2 diabetes.
There’s definitely a genetic predisposition to obesity, which increases the risk of insulin resistance and diabetes. There could also be an environmental trigger.
Most likely, it’s a combination of factors that increases the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Treatment

Follow these tips to manage type 2 diabetes:

Medications

In some cases, lifestyle changes are enough to keep type 2 diabetes under control. If not, there are several medications that may help. Some of these medications are:

Note: Medicines should be taken only after prescribed by doctors.

During pregnancy, some women develop high blood sugar levels. This condition is known as gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) or gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes typically develops between the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy.
If you develop gestational diabetes while you’re pregnant, it doesn’t mean that you had diabetes before your pregnancy or will have it afterward. But gestational diabetes does raise your risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the future.
If poorly managed, it can also raise your child’s risk of developing diabetes and increase the risk of complications for you and your baby during pregnancy and delivery.

Symptoms

Causes

The exact cause of gestational diabetes is unknown, but hormones likely play a role. When you’re pregnant, your body produces larger amounts of some hormones, including:

These hormones affect your placenta and help sustain your pregnancy. Over time, the amount of these hormones in your body increases. They may start to make your body resistant to insulin, the hormone that regulates your blood sugar.
Insulin helps move glucose out of your blood into your cells, where it’s used for energy. In pregnancy, your body naturally becomes slightly insulin resistant, so that more glucose is available in your blood stream to be passed to the baby. If the insulin resistance becomes too strong, your blood glucose levels may rise abnormally. This can cause gestational diabetes.

Treatment

If you’re diagnosed with gestational diabetes, your treatment plan will depend on your blood sugar levels throughout the day.
In most cases, your doctor will advise you to test your blood sugar before and after meals, and manage your condition by eating healthy and exercising regularly.
In some cases, they may also add insulin injections if needed. According to the Mayo Clinic, only 10 to 20 percent of women with gestational diabetes need insulin to help control their blood sugar.
If your doctor encourages you to monitor your blood sugar levels, they may supply you with a special glucose-monitoring device.
They may also prescribe insulin injections for you until you give birth. Ask your doctor about properly timing your insulin injections in relation to your meals and exercise to avoid low blood sugar.
Your doctor can also tell you what to do if your blood sugar levels fall too low or are consistently higher than they should be.

Note: Medicines should be taken only after prescribed by doctors.