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Asked by Resh@science to Chris, Hayley, Jimi, Maddison, Omur on 14 Mar 2016.
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Hayley Moulding answered on 14 Mar 2016:
I love the fact your favourite scientist is Charles Darwin – he was an incredibly inspirational man! Anyway, this is a great question. Type 1 diabetes however isn’t always more dangerous than type 2. Sometimes it is. People with type 1 diabetes have a problem from birth. They don’t have cells in their pancreas which make a hormone called ‘insulin.’ Insulin keeps the level of sugar in our blood low and controls it when it is too high, to make it lower again. If you can’t make this yourself, you need to have extra insulin from an injection or a pump to help control the sugar in your blood. It can make it more dangerous if you need to rely on having an injection. Some people though with type 2 diabetes still need to rely on injections of insulin too. It depends how bad the type 2 diabetes is. Sometimes people with type 2 diabetes need medication too and this makes it very dangerous when they don’t get the medication. Sometimes people with type 2 diabetes though don’t need medication and changes in their diet and their exercise can help and they might not have diabetes anymore. So yes, type 1 is usually more dangerous, but sometimes type 2 is as dangerous as they need to have medication too.
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Jimi Wills answered on 15 Mar 2016:
People with type II tend to be more at risk of other ill-effects, because it tends to be caused by poor diet (though many cases are not cuase by this). Too much sugar means you release massive amounts of insulin in your body, and your body then builds up a resistance to the insulin… which is why you become diabetic. But that sugary diet causes lots of other health problems too… which put type II insulin resistant patients at risk from a lot of other health problems.
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Omur Tastan answered on 16 Mar 2016:
I love this question! Type 1 diabetes can develop in children without any warning. A friend of mine had it when we were in primary school and she had to start taking a hormone called Insulin, to help with it. That’s why it can be more dangerous, you need to have a constant supply of insulin.
Whereas Type 2 generally develops when we are grown up and most of the time it is due to our own habits. Genetics does play a role but we need to keep healthy, exercise so that we lower our chances of developing Type 2 diabetes.
I hope this helps 🙂
Comments
Resh@science commented on :
Thanks about Charles Darwin and thanks for the explanation!! You mentioned that people can have type 1 from birth, is this because it’s genetic?
Omur commented on :
Hello @Resh@science, Type 1 Diabetes is a disease where our own body decides to destroy a very important hormone called Insulin. When your body destroys its own proteins, this is called an Auto-immune disease. There is not much we can do about these illnesses most of the time, other than disabling our own immune system and that can have very bad affects on us.
What happens is, when the body goes and attacks all those precious insulin producing cells (we don’t have many-There are companies in USA just trying to produce cells that are capable of producing insulin) those cells die and don’t come back. When those cells are gone, body doesn’t have any insulin. When you don’t have insulin, sugar cannot go into your cells and your cells starve and this can even kill you.
Children generally develop this diseases when they are younger. However some children can be born with no such cells to produce insulin and this can be genetic or a problem during development. It is hard to tell but a simple test would show us whether they have the genes required to make insulin or not. 🙂