Struggling With Diabetes

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy, most of the food you eat is broken down into sugar and released into your bloodstream. When your blood sugar goes up, it signals your pancreas to start making insulin.

What are the types of diabetes? Type 1 diabetes is where your pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin. Type 2 diabetes is when your body’s cells don’t respond normally to insulin, this is called insulin resistance. Your pancreas will make more insulin to see if the cells will respond, finally, your pancreas can’t keep up and your blood sugar rises leading to type 2 diabetes. Diabetes can affect the body in many different ways, depending on the type of diabetes the symptoms may vary. When asked how diabetes affects the body Mila Wolfe(11) responded “Blood sugar is something I have to pay attention to, if it gets too high I start to feel bad if I get too low
I can feel dizzy and shaky, just bad in general.”

When asked how diabetes affects your daily life Mila said “It affects the things i’m able to participate in like what i have to do before being able to participate but it’s not too different to normal life.” The anonymous student of WHS said, “I have to adjust my schedule so I can eat as close to 12:00 as I can.” How many people are affected by diabetes? When asked how many other kids and adults do you know that also have diabetes? Mila responded. “I know 2 adults that also have diabetes and I know 3 or 4 other kids since I went to a diabetes camp 2 years ago.” In America, 34.2 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes. That’s 10.5% of the U.S. population.