The Health Blog

What is gestational diabetes?

There is a third kind of diabetes, though it is much less common than types I and II. It is called gestational diabetes because it begins during pregnancy, which doctors call the gestational period.

What are the risk factors for gestational diabetes?
- If a woman has someone in her family who already has diabetes, she is more likely candidate for gestational diabetes.
- If a woman is over 30 years old and especially if she is overweight.

Why does it happen only during pregnancy?
Pregnancy is a time of additional stresses to the human body. the body may fail to produce enough insulin to meet the need during this time. Approximately one percent of all women may develop symptoms of diabetes during the last half of pregnancy.

What are the symptoms of gestational diabetes?
Gestational diabetes may not cause any symptoms, however, excessive weight gain maybe noticeable at some cases. Excessive hunger or thirst, excessive urination or recurrent vaginal infections can also be signs and symptoms.

Risks for Diabetes Type 2:

1. Hereditary factors. With type 2 diabetes, there is a very strong family tendency toward the disease. If you have one family member with diabetes, your chances of getting it are twice as high as for an average person with no diabetic relatives. If you have two relatives with diabetes, you have four times the normal likelihood of becoming a diabetic yourself.

2. Overweight. Obesity is linked to many disease. In fact it was said that it is more dangerous than terrorism. When you eat more calories than your body actually needs, those extra calories are stored in the body as fat - regardless of whether the calories came from carbohydrates, proteins or fats.

Remember that insulin works to move not only glucose but also fats into storage. When fat cells are ful, however, they lose some of their ability to respond to insulin, so the pancreas produces more and more insulin in its effort to get the “doors” of the cells to open. Thus the pancreas has to work overtime to cope with the excess calories you eat. Also, the pancreas may eventually suffer from fatigue and lose some of its ability to produce insulin.

If a person already has diabetes somewhere in his family, he must guard extra carefully against becoming overweight.

3. Lack of exercise. For a person to have really good health, two of the most important factors are proper food and regular exercise. Getting regular exercise is one of the best ways of helping to prevent the lifestyle disease such as diabetes, heart attack and stroke.

With so many people getting diabetes nowadays, will you be one of them? Does it matter whether you are rich or poor, thin or fat, old or young? Surely, you can’t catch diabetes from someone who has it - that is it’s not contagious! But how then does a person get diabetes? Does it come from eating too much sugar? And who is likely to get it?

Risks for the two main types of diabetes are quite different. Let’s take a look at the Type I first:

1. Genetic factors:

There are at least two particular genes that give a person the tendency toward developing type I diabetes. They belong to the so-called HLA system, which controls the body’s defenses against infection.

2. Diabetes as an Autoimmune Disease

Many scientists now believe that type I diabetes is the result of the body’s immune system attacking its own insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.

A recent study found out that subjects who reported sleeping five or fewer hours each night were significantly more likely to have diabetes over the follow-up period compared to subjects who reported sleeping seven hours. These findings held true even after the researchers adjusted for variables such as physical activity, depression, alcohol consumption, ethnicity, education, marital status, age, obesity and history of hypertension.

So here are some tips on getting a good night sleep to help you avoid diabetes:

1. Follow a consistent bedtime routine.
2. Establish a relaxing setting at bedtime.
3. Get a full night’s sleep every night.
4. Avoid foods or drinks that contain caffeine, as well as any medicine that has a stimulant, prior to bedtime.
5. Do not go to bed hungry, but don’t eat a big meal before bedtime either.
6. Avoid any rigorous exercise within six hours of your bedtime.
7. Make your bedroom quiet, dark and a little bit cool.
8. Get up at the same time every morning.

There are two main types of diabetes mellitus (DM), Type I diabetes (also called insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, IDDM) and Type II diabetes (also called non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus).

Type I diabetes:
It occurs when the insulin-producing cells in the body do not function, and they make little or no insulin. If the body does not even produce insulin, the glucose cannot move into the cells. TO stay alive, the majority of these people will have to depend on insulin injections for the rest of their lives. Type I is much less common form of diabetes - only about 10-20 percent of all diabetics are insulin dependent. This kind of diabetes usually begins in childhood or youth.

Type II diabetes:
It most often begins in overweight adults who are over the age of 40. With Type II diabetes, the pancreas does still produce some insulin. In some cases, the body is simply not making enough insulin. In other cases, however, the body may be making an adequate amount of insulin, but that insulin is no longer effective because the cells’ insulin receptors are jammed. The pancreas may try to remedy the situation by producing more and more insulin. But if the receptors don’t work, even this may not help.

Accurately speaking, we should call the disease by its full name, diabetes mellitus, to avoid confusion with a much rarer and totally different type of diabetes, called diabetes insipidus. The the average person knows the disease simply as diabetes, so that’s how are we going to call it in this blog.

Diabetes is a lifelong disease in which a person’s body either does not produce enough insulin or cannot makes proper use of the insulin which it does not produce.

Insulin is a hormone - a chemical which helps regulate and control certain body functions. Insulin is made by the pancreas, which is a small endocrine gland located just below the stomach. In the pancreas, special beta cells in the areas called the islets of Langerhans secrete insulin directly into the bloodstream. There insulin works to control the amount of glucose in the blood.

Glucose is really just sugar. When your body digests the foods you eat, it changes the carbohydrates (as well as some of the proteins and fats) into glucose. Glucose is your sources of energy - the fuel for your body. And glucose is the nourishment for the various cells in the body.

I am starting another series for this blog, which I entitled The Diabetes Series. This series will focus on general information about diabetes, tips on living with diabetes, and new treatments.

I first thought of starting this blog using a Blogger account but due to time constraints it entails - I try to be multitasking but I couldn’t, I decided to integrate it with this health blog.

Why I decided write about diabetes? It’s on my bloodline. My grandmother and 2 uncles has diabetes. And as the medical student in the family, I am always asked about the disease. So with writing about diabetes is one way of learning more about it.

Hope you enjoy my diabetes series! And oh, yeah, I am planning to do a Cardio Series in the future if time permits.

Eliminate risk factors. Know your risk, which one can be changed and which are not.

Risk factors that you can change include some diseases. If you can control the disease, you may lower your risk for stroke. Controllable risk factors include:

• High blood pressure (hypertension). High blood pressure is the second most important stroke risk factor after age.
• Diabetes. Having diabetes doubles your risk for stroke because of the circulation problems associated with the disease. 2
• High cholesterol. High cholesterol can lead to coronary artery disease and heart attack, which can damage the heart muscle and increase your risk for stroke.
• Other heart conditions, such as atrial fibrillation, endocarditis, heart valve conditions, or cardiomyopathy.
• Smoking. Daily cigarette smoking can increase the risk of stroke 2½ times.
• Lack of physical activity.

Some risk factors, however, can’t be changed. Risk factors that you cannot change include:

• Age. The risk for stroke increases with age. Most strokes occur in people older than 65.
• Race. African Americans and Hispanics have a higher risk than people of other races.
• Gender. Stroke is more common in men than women. However, at older ages, more women than men have strokes. At all ages, more women than men die of stroke.
• Family history. The risk for stroke is greater if a parent, brother, or sister has had a stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA).
  Prior history of stroke or TIA. About 14% of people who have a stroke have another stroke within 1 year.

Do you prefer fast foods? Well, you have to refrain eating more now. A new study finds out that the typical Western diet increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Indulging in a typical Western diet of burgers, fries, and diet soda boosts your risk of getting heart disease and diabetes, a study shows.

This study found out that just two burger patties a day and one daily diet soda substantially boost the risk of getting metabolic syndrome, which in turn increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Their findings:
1. The Western diet increased risk by about 18% overall of getting metabolic syndrome over nine years

2. Those who ate two or more servings of meat a day, or about two burger patties, boosted their risk by 26% compared with those who only ate meat twice a week.

3. Diet soda, one can a day, increased risk by 34%.

WebMD reports about a mysterious skin problem is erupting all over the US — and it’s caught the CDC’s attention. It’s been called Morgellons disease, and health officials don’t know what to make of it. Currently, the CDC is making investigations about this rare skin disorder.

How big this problem is?
It was said that more than 11,000 people in the U.S. and elsewhere have reported to have this disease.

How do you know you have the disease?
Patients complaints of disturbing sensations of insect-like crawling, stinging or biting on or under the skin, skin rashes and lesions that do not heal, fiber-like filaments, granules or crystals that appear on or under the skin or that can be extracted from lesions.

Other manifestations include joint, muscle and connective tissue pain, including fibromyalgia, debilitating fatigue and cognitive dysfunction, including difficulty with concentration, short-term memory, and attention.

One of the approach to treatment of essential hypertension is lifestyle change. Here are the easy ways on changing your lifestyle:

1. Stop smoking. It has been emphasized in various health articles that smoking can cause hypertension. About 30% of all deaths from heart disease in the U.S. are directly related to cigarette smoking. That’s because smoking is a major cause of coronary artery disease especially in younger people.

How Does Smoking Increase Heart Disease Risk?

The nicotine present in smoke causes:

* Decreased oxygen to the heart.
* Increased blood pressure and heart rate.
* Increase in blood clotting.
* Damage to cells that line coronary arteries and other blood vessels.

2. Lose weight if overweight. Maintain body mass index of 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2. For every 10 kilogram weight loss, BP drops by approximately 5-20 mmHg.

3. Reduce sodium intake (<2 g of sodium or approximately <6 g of sodium chloride).