Photo : Mercado de la Boqueria, Barcelona, May 2011
» The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will involve the patient in the proper use of food, fresh air and exercise. » Thomas Edison
I guess we are motivated to find out more about a disease once someone close to us is affected.That was my case when my father was diagnosed a few years ago with Type 2 Diabet (non insuline dependent).
The diagnostic itself turned out to be a good thing as it pushed my father to change his food intake dramatically which allows him today to enjoy more vitality than 6 years ago.
Anyway the diabetes type 2 caused by factors like stress, genetics, high saturated fat consumption, lack of exercice is reversible.And for once, the classical medicine and the naturopathy agreed both upon this.
In search for simple and clear information to understand how diabetes works, this is how I would summarize it:
1° The first main manager of sugar in our body is the liver and secondly the pancreas.
2° The liver stores it (under the form of glycogen) and will managed it depending on the orders received from 2 hormones glucagon and the insuline.(released by the pancreatic cells)
3° The glucagon will order the liver to release glucose when there isn’t enough in the blood and the insulin will signal the liver when there is a high level of sugar to take it and store it.
4° In case of diabetes, there is a bad management of sugar (insufficient insuline or resistance of the body to insuline).This dysfunction will prevent sugar (glucose) to get to the cell, so the cell isn’t nourished.
5°High sugar level stiffens the walls of blood vessels leading, in time, to their obstruction.This is how are explained the main complications of diabetes : the cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, obstruction of the capillaries of the eyes (rétinopathy), infringement of nerves (neuropathy).