How does adult onset Type I diabetes work? Is it “burnout” of the body’s ability to make insulin? Why isn’t it noticed sooner? Does good lifestyle prevent symptom development?
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The cause is the destruction of the pancreas’s insulin-producing beta cells; this is what makes it distinct from type 2, which actually is a lessening of the body’s ability to utilize insulin. As for why the body would suddenly turn on itself and destroy those beta cells, there isn’t a single cause that science has conclusively identified.
Everybody’s story is different, but mine is fairly typical – it developed at age 18 after a pretty severe and to this day undiagnosed infection that laid me up in bed for a week. After I got better, I started dropping muscle and fat very, very slowly, but by the time I’d started college about 6 months later, I had lost over 30 pounds and was on the brink of collapse.
It’s just a very gradual onset thing that’s easy to ignore until you’re suddenly very seriously ill, and people can be in denial that something so severe could actually be wrong with them. I know that I was. I felt like an idiot telling people I thought I was sick, and I was so emaciated and weak I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror.
A healthy lifestyle cannot prevent type I diabetes, but it helps immensely once you’re on insulin. Eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly has helped me maintain an average blood sugar that’s very close to that of a normal person for almost 15 years now, and I am completely free of complications. Multiple doctors have told me that I will likely live a normal lifespan if patterns hold. It’s not a death sentence at all – one’s lifestyle can have a very powerful impact on their quality of life. Perhaps more than any other disease that comes to mind.
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