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Understanding Diabetes
       

So you have diabetes! Don't Panic.

There is a lot to learn but help is at hand.

Here you can learn about the various types of diabetes, why it happens, the sort of symptoms you might experience and how the diagnosis is made.

It is important you learn about your diabetes so that you can better understand and manage it.

 
What is Diabetes?
 
 
Diabetes (or to give it its proper title – diabetes mellitus) is a common condition where the body has difficulty dealing with glucose or 'sugar'. This happens for various reasons which we will come to later. Glucose is constantly produced by the breakdown of carbohydrates from our food as well as from stores within our bodies. When you have diabetes your body cannot use
  

 

 

the glucose or ‘sugar’ effectively. As a result, the level of glucose rises in the blood and this leads to the symptoms of diabetes and sometimes after a number of years to the complications of diabetes.

Remember you are not alone. Diabetes is a common condition. At this time, 3 to 4 people in every 100 in Northern Ireland have diabetes. There are probably as many as 8000 people with diabetes living within the Ulster Hospital catchment area (East Belfast, Holywood, North Down and Ards areas). It is estimated that over 1.7 million people in the United Kingdom as a whole now have diabetes and the number is increasing.

There are two main types of diabetes -

 

•  Type 1 diabetes (about 5% of all those with diabetes have this type)

•  Type 2 diabetes (over 90% of all those with diabetes have this type)

As well as the two main types of diabetes – you can also develop diabetes during pregnancy. This is known as gestational diabetes.

There are also some very rare forms of diabetes such as maturity onset diabetes of the young.

Diabetes can sometimes happen as a consequence of another disease when it is then known as secondary diabetes and sometimes diabetes can be caused by particular drug treatments and this is known as drug-induced diabetes.