health answers:

Start with your school and your doctor. Check with your local bank, they can help with fund raising. Your local community center and your local newspaper can be sources of support and organization.

I love your enthusiasm. Never let diabetes stop you from doing anything! Good luck.

health answers:

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, meaning that the body is attacking itself. In this case, the body is destroying its own beta cells, which are the cells that help produce insulin. It usually develops in younger people, usually under the age of 15 or 20. You can’t give yourself type 1 diabetes, and you can’t do anything to avoid getting it.

People can increase their chances of developing type 2 by not exercising, having bad eating habits, or taking certain prescription medications like the steroid Prednisone for long periods of time. Untreated pancreatitis can also increase the chances of developing type 2, and in some cases, directly cause its onset.

There’s a theory floating around that giving yourself just a little bit of insulin everyday for a long period of time can cause your body to slowly stop producing its own and become dependent on the outside source. This could cause diabetes, but it’s only an idea as far as I know. No one in their right mind would be dumb enough to test it because too much insulin is dangerous, low blood sugar sucks, and there’s no guide as to the “safe” level for outside insulin in non diabetics.

Hope this at least partly satisfied your curiosity!

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How he feels… Depends on him. But type 1 diabetes can be quite hard at times. You’d think the injections were the hard part. Actually, they’re the easy part.

Counting your food intake all the time, trying to predict the highs and lows they cause, managing treatment, having your mood affected by the ups and downs (feeling tired/depressed/defeated occasionally, just when you thought you were doing well), that makes it hard… Getting silly things like colds more often and having them last longer, not being able to just enjoy a meal with friends, not being able to go camping or up a mountain or anywhere, really, without planning it all, and having to worry about whether you’ll be a burden on others or something; finding it a lot tougher to do healthy things like regular exercise because that can be dangerous… You can see how frustrating this maybe – patience is a virtue here…

All of these are relatively small things on their own, but overall, can have a big impact. Generally, people can handle it all, but it takes a lot of what they have. If you get other life problems on top, like problems at home or at work, it can be overwhelming. Then you get MORE complex problems, like potential blindness, if you’ve had the condition a long time.

Insulin pumps… There’s a needle set into the stomach, and the pump connects to it with a tube. It’s a bit like the needles they put into your hand/arm, so they can attach tubes from a drip when you’re in hospital.

How it works? It pumps insulin into you, a little at a time, a bit like how a non-diabetic’s pancreas would create insulin. However, it’s manually controlled by buttons. Figuring out what buttons to press is the tough (and dangerous) part.

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Guest Answer: I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been type 1 since I was 1 year old. All of my life my motto has been ‘it’s the quality of life not quantity’. I’m 38, have had very mild complications, a rough pregnancy and have never been a model diabetic. I enjoy food, especially carbs, and a beer. My a1c is typically a 7.

It took me a very long time, 10+years, to loose the pregnancy weight, but I’m now 114 lbs. I do take lots of vitamins and try to work out at least 3 times a week. I’m a true believer in small portions of any crappy foods. It satisfies my craving and makes me happy too. Six small meals a day helped with the weight, too.

You may also want to get your thyroid checked. It is common for type 1 diabetics to develop an under active thyroid. The blood test is called a THS.

Good luck in your search for answers.

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Guest Answer: I have type 1 diabetes and use an insulin pump.

I dunno what it’s made of lol – the same kinda stuff as any kind of computer or electrical device – I guess a bit like a phone it’s got a tough plastic case, but obviously it also has insulin in it!

It’s connected to me all the time although I can disconnect to take a shower or go swimming etc. For a short time. It goes into my skin using a cannula – a bit like when you have a drip they put a needle in and then take it out and a little plastic tube is left under your skin. I change this myself every few days.

The insulin works like a really high tech syringe – it pushes a little bit forwards every few minutes (I set the rate). So it drip feeds me insulin 24 hours a day, but I can also tell my pump if I eat or if my blood sugar’s high and how much and it can calculate how much insulin I need, or I can just tell it how much I want to take.

The advantages of having a pump are that I don’t need to inject and I can adjust my insulin much more closely according to what I need throughout the day. It also means it’s a lot more easy to exercise which is great 🙂 But it’s a lot of work and the big needle every couple of days is worse than 4 or 5 small injections / day! Also because I have nhs funding (uk) there is a lot of pressure on me to do well on the pump or they’ll cut my funding and I don’t have as much choice of consultants. Also having a pump attached to you all the time isn’t for everyone – I’ve had mine for 4 years so it’s kinda just a part of me now but sometimes you wish you could forget it for a little while – esp if you’re gonna wear a dress or something!

I’m not exactly sure what you mean about how it feels to have type 1? I’ve had it for 14 years, so don’t really know any different. A lot of the time it sucks – esp when it stops you from doing something.

I wanted to join a new gym at the weekend and they said I have to get a letter from my doctor first – it’s more annoying than anything else. Then there’s when people think they know more about your diabetes than you do so they say things like ‘you shouldn’t be eating that’ when you’re eating glucose tablets because you’re hypo!

Or when you have to stop what you’re doing for diabetes – at the gym, I sometimes have to leave classes or stop and test my blood during a class and that’s embarrassing, although most people at my gym know I have diabetes and that makes me feel a lot safer, so it has it’s good and bad points. Most people with type 1 diabetes grow up to be more organized than other people and it teaches us that there’s more to life than always meets the eye – it has it’s good points as well as bad.

Hope that helps.