Why do diabetics either get hypoglycemic or hyperglycemic?
In: Biology
Your basically asking for Diabetes 101 with your question so here it is.
Diabetes is a disease where the body loses the ability to regulate its blood sugar. Think of it like a thermostat in a modern car where you set the interior to 70 degrees and the car does the rest. Heat = blood sugar, Air conditioning = insulin. It’s a bit more complex than that, but it’s simple enough for ELI5. The key here is that we need blood sugar(heat), without a certain amount of it we aren’t healthy. But too much is also bad.
When you turn the car on in the morning your thermostat tells the car it wants heat. At 2pm when the sun is shining your car is getting too hot, the thermostat says turn on the AC. Your body does the same thing, it releases a specific hormone in the body(you’ve probably heard of insulin) and insulin is like a trigger so that your cells can consume the blood sugar, like how AC will balance out the heat on a hot day. Insulin allows your cells to use the blood sugar for energy which consumes the blood sugar. But if your thermostat or AC is broken, your body can’t balance this on it’s own. Not enough insulin and too much blood sugar? Hyperglycemia. Too much insulin and not enough blood sugar? Hypoglycemia.
So diabetes and it’s types are different problems with your bodies thermostat/AC that causes problems with cells ability to use blood sugar.
Heat is always coming into the car from the outside, we need that AC. Your body should be maintaining blood sugar(heat) by balancing it’s insulin(AC) output. Type 1 diabetes is where your body(pancreas) is being attacked by your immune system and it doesn’t work anymore or barely at all. So you MUST bring your own AC(insulin) and you’re fully dependent on your own AC, the car isn’t making it. So you can bring your own AC in one shot bottles(insulin injections) or use an insulin pump which is like rigging a house window ac unit into the back seat and bypassing the car’s.
Type 2 is typically associated with bad diet and unhealthy lifestyle and your insulin production(AC) is stressed and just not working properly(think of it like a mechanical problem that causes erratic performance where the cause is poor maintenance, maybe a chipmunk nest in the compressor). Proper diet can really help as avoiding lots of sugar(heat) makes your body’s job easier and minimizes surges of blood sugar(heat) which minimizes the need for insulin(AC). This can usually get better if you develop better habits like exercise(clean the junk out of the AC compressor), don’t stress the AC(avoid high sugar foods), and weight loss(improves AC efficiency).
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