Type 1 vs Type 2

Today Brady and I were outside playing and our neighbor kids were outside as well sitting near our house eating jelly beans. As soon as I saw this I said "ah crap." I knew Brady would want to have some of what the big kids were having and but as soon as they saw Brady coming they said "oh hide the candy here comes Brady, he can't eat candy." This bugged me b/c is was partly true, but not for the reason the kids thought.

There is always a lot of confusion about the differences of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Whenever you hear anything in the media about diabetes i.e. commercials, magazine articles, or newscasts the info is always vague and only uses the word diabetes without type 1 or type 2 in front of it. This bugs me to no end. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are so different it's not even funny and I really believe that the myths and mis-information about diabetes stems from this vagueness.

First of all T1 diabetes is an auto-immune disease or self-allergy, such as arthritis, chrohns disease, or multiple sclerosis. In other words your body attacks it's own cells and kills them. With T1 diabetes the body kills the beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. So the pancreas still creates enzymes but does not produce anymore insulin to regulate the body's blood sugar levels. People who are diagnosed with T1 are usually children or young adults. Symptoms of the disease are frequent urination, over-whelming thirst, a sweet smelling breath, fatigue and most people are unable to sleep. This is why it was so hard for Aaron and I to know what was going on with Brady b/c he was still in a diaper at the time and he couldn't really tell us how he felt b/c he had just turned two. The age of 2 is really an unusual age to be diagnosed with diabetes, I think I read that 2-4 year olds make up only 2% of type 1 cases. So type 1 diabetics have to inject insulin into they're bodies to make up for they're lack of insulin production. They don't really have to watch what they eat. We let Brady eat what ever he wants most of the time. I don't let him eat candy all day, but most parents don't let they're kids do that anyway. The only time we try to persuade him what to eat is if his blood sugar is high for no reason and we're trying to get it down. We try not to let him eat ice cream or candy during these times. But we really want Brady to grow up a normal kid with normal eating habits so when he is older he won't rebel and not manage his diabetes well. We're laying the groundwork now so we don't have problems in the future.

So type 2 diabetes is totally different. It is not an auto-immune disease. People with type 2 are usually overweight and they're pancreas does not produce enough insulin and eventually the pancreas becomes so overworked that they don't produce any insulin at all. The treatment for T2 is generally oral medication, diet, and exercise. Some t2's don't do these things and they will eventually have to go on injections too. But if t2's watch they're diet and exercise they often can reverse they're diabetes.

18.2 million people have diabetes in the U.S. Only 5-10% of those 18.2 million people are type 1, the rest are all type 2's. I don't understand why the type 2's get all the hype. They can totally reverse they're disease, type 1's can't.

Sorry, I didn't mean for this post to be such a science lesson, it just really bugs me when people try to hide candy from Brady or make comments about how he's probably on a restricted diet. He can eat what ever he want as long as I know how many carbs are in whatever he eats, which isn't always easy, but we manage. So when our neighbor girl asked if Brady could have some, I shook my head and said no b/c I didn't know how many carbs were in the candy and I didn't feel like guessing. It's just too much of a gamble. Brady didn't seem to mind, he just wanted to hang out with the big kids.