Question: What do you need to have if you got diabeties?

Rory Miles answered on 13 Mar 2014:

Hi @sahilq. Diabetes is a disease caused by high sugar in the blood, that the person can’t reduce. This can then cause awful problems around the body. Generally, doctors find out if you have diabetes by giving sugar. This is pure sugar that we call glucose. All sugar is made up of glucose. Biomedical Scientists in a hospital will then look at the sample of your blood and see the levels of this glucose in it. The level of the sugar after being given it will let them know if the person is diabetic. The level of the sugar will stay high in the persons blood if they do have diabetes.

The medicine that the person is given will depend on the type that they have: there are 2 main types. You are born with type 1 (or develop it before you are a teenager). This type can be treated by giving people a particular medicine called insulin. This is a chemical that signals to the body to get rid of the sugar in your blood (we call this type of chemical a hormone). If patients take it before a meal, they can make sure that their sugar levels do not rise too much. People who are type 2 develop it over their life (usually when they are over 50). Generally they are passed genes (biological information) from their parents that makes it more likely for them to get diabetes, but being overweight makes it worse. These patients cannot take Insulin (the chemical) as it does not help reduce the sugar in their blood. Instead, the best way for them to get rid of the sugar is to eat healthily (low fat, low sugar) and excercise regularly.