What is Type 1 Diabetes- explained our way

Type One Diabetes is an auto immune condition- this is where your immune system attacks healthy body tissue by mistake. In Type one this means that the immune system attacks the healthy cells in the pancreas. This therefore makes the pancreas unable to produce anymore insulin. Taking away the production of insulin has a vital affect on the body as without it, glucose can then not be moved out of the bloodstream and into cells for the body to use as energy sources. 

In turn this causes your body to feel tired, become thirsty , need the toilet a lot more frequently and start to become thinner. This is know as the 4 T's of Diabetes - 

Toilet- The body will try and get rid of the excess glucose by pushing it out in the urine.

Thirsty- Because more urine is being passed there is an increased thirst.

Tired - Because the cells aren't getting enough energy there will be tiredness and eventually exhaustion.

Thinner - Because the body still needs energy , it will starts to break down fat stores so there will be weight loss. 

If untreated you will have high blood sugar ( hyper) -your body can start to become very poorly very quickly. In some cases within days.High blood sugar can have long lasting effects to your health, such as: kidney failure, blindness, limb amputation and heart disease.

The body will eventually start to produce Ketone's - these are toxic to the body- effectively poisoning your body.  This then becomes a  condition called DKA ( Diabetic Ketoacidosis ) where essentially you could go into a diabetic coma and potentially die. 

There unfortunately is not a yet a cure for Type One Diabetes. 

Instead you have to follow a strict regime of blood glucose monitoring. A type one will test their blood sugar by a small prick to their finger at least 4 times a day ( in reality this happens a lot more frequently). A normal blood sugar reading should be between 4-7 mmol. 

In order to keep this within range as much as possible you need to inject yourself with insulin every time you eat. As you can imagine for a small child this can be several times a day. You will need to carb- count your food in order to know how much insulin to inject. 

If you inject the does of insulin and the body does not need that much you will suffer from low blood sugar ( a hypo). This can cause  the body to feel shaky, sweaty, sleepy, tired, confused, dizzy, grumpy and weak. Low blood sugar needs to be treated fast with sugar - usually a sugary drink. Some people are hypo unaware ( especially small children). If then a hypo is left untreated the person could faint, have a seizure or go into a coma. to treat this you would need to inject glucose immediately to bring the sugar levels back up. 

Type one is very much a  roller coaster ride as its not just  as simple as carb counting and injecting. Hormones, exercise and growth spurts also play a massive part which usually causes blood sugar to fluctuate very quickly. 

No one knows what causes type one diabetes ( there are a lot of scientific theories) - it is not necessarily hereditary- it just happens. It sounds harsh but there is no other choice for a type one - its inject or die.