I went to urgent care on a holiday weekend while doctors and nurses crowded around me, introducing themselves as quickly as they could to stick a needle in my fingertip or an IV in my vein. I tried my best to calm the chaos around the room, but there was only one thing left for me. Thoughts running through my head: Please don’t get diabetes. Until that weekend, I had never considered that I could have diabetes.I turned 27 and was approaching adulthood.th My birthday was exactly two weeks ago. I had always had an image of good health, but I had no family history of illness. But after weeks of various (and increasingly worsening) symptoms, including fatigue, extreme thirst, and significant weight loss, when I went to see my doctor early that morning, I realized that my blood sugar levels were at dangerous levels. They ordered an ambulance to take me to the hospital. Because the number was high, it seems that the possibility of being diagnosed with diabetes in the future was unexpected.
Still, I spent the rest of the time in complete denial and desperately clinging to other explanations. From what I understood, diabetes was the product of an unhealthy lifestyle of eating lots of junk food and little physical activity. I remember following her parents’ warnings not to eat too much candy and sweets to avoid getting sick, and tearfully watching Shelby, played by Julia Roberts, die from diabetic complications. . steel magnolia. More recently, advertisements for drugs like Ozempic and Munjaro that promise weight loss to diabetics have only further solidified my idea of what people with diabetes are like. I believed that diabetes was a punishment brought about by a person’s unhealthy choices and deserved all the stigma surrounding it. So when the doctors came back to confirm my new type 1 diabetes diagnosis, I was horrified and heartbroken and didn’t know what to do to cause this.
But what I quickly learned was that my understanding of diabetes was all wrong. What I thought I knew about it was completely wrong, and I wasn’t the only one who had this misconception.
Meet the experts:
- michael nutterM.D. is a board-certified endocrinologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City.
- Elana DumontPsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist based in New York City.
- david anneM.D. is a board-certified endocrinologist and director of diabetes at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, California.
In this story:
Difference between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes
Confusion about diabetes is widespread, and much of it stems from a lack of knowledge about the different types. The two most common types of diabetes, type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, are often grouped together (including: by CDC), despite two different conditions. Both cause high blood sugar and can cause the same type of symptoms, but type 1 is actually an autoimmune disease, while type 2 is usually caused by lifestyle factors. “Type 2 diabetes is a real epidemic, and when you look at prediabetes and type 2 diabetes together, it accounts for almost 50 percent of the adult population. [in America]” michael nutter, MD, is a board-certified endocrinologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City, specializing in the treatment of diabetes. “Most laypeople think of diabetes as diabetes, so when they think of diabetes, they think of type 2 diabetes.”
Diabetes is one of the oldest known medical conditions and has appeared in historical documents. As early as 3000 years ago. Since the symptoms and end result of hyperglycemia are the same for all diabetics, it was not until his 1936, ten years after the discovery of insulin, that diabetes was classified into two types. was. In many cases, insulin injections successfully managed the disease, but some cases did not respond to treatment, making it clear that lack of insulin was not always the problem.