Quote:
Originally Posted by APerfectLie
I've been a diabetic for 7 years. The illness itself does not really get progressively worse. If you gain weight or become less active, your blood sugar can become harder to manage, but the disease does not become progressively worse on its own such as cancer or AIDS. People usually do not die from diabetes or high blood sugar itself (even tho it does happen), what people usually die from are the complications that arise from diabetes. When your blood sugar is high, it causes damage to every organ and blood vessel in the body. Over time, this can lead to poor circulation and nerve problems, which can make injuries turn into gangrene very quickly, cause blindness, loss of feeling, kidney failure, heart failure, heart attacks and strokes. The disease itself is a bitch, but the things that arise from the disease are even more of a bitch. Diabetes accounts for 44% of new cases of kidney failure, 60% of amputations, and is the leading cause of blindness.
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Well, it does get worse in the sense that the pancreatic beta cells producing endogenous insulin die off over time as the underlying pathology (i.e., autoimmune process) continues unabated. This invariably means having to increase meds/insulin to compensate. But, yes, it's the complications of the disease that are the most worrisome rather than the disease itself. I am confident that a cure for Type 1 diabetes that addresses it from the immune side of things will be found in our lifetimes.
12-09-2010, 10:50 PM
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