Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a national diabetes statistics report. More than one person on ten lives with diabetes. There are around 34,2 million diabetics in the USA and over 34,1 million of these are adults.

 Children who have or are predisposed to  diabetes are more followed by doctors because if they become diabetic, they will have to live with it all the rest of their lives.

Diabetes is characterized by chronic hyperglycemia, that is to say an excess of sugar in the blood and therefore a level of glucose (blood sugar) that is too high. Diabetes cannot be cured, but can be treated and controlled. It is caused by not using a hormone called insulin. Normally, insulin allows cells to use sugar for energy. But diabetes prevents the body from properly using sugar for energy.

We have two different types of diabetes, the first one is Type 1. It usually starts in childhood, adolescence, and young adults. It is caused by the destruction of the Islets of Langerhans, the part of the pancreas that produces insulin.

The second one is type 2; the pancreas continues to produce insulin, but it is inadequate. In addition, despite the presence of insulin, it is not effective due to the body’s resistance to its action.

This are symptoms of diabetes, excessive thirst, frequent hunger, frequent need to urinate, fatigue or sleepiness, blurred vision, tingling in fingers or feet, unexplained weight loss or gain, irritability or mood fluctuations, fruity breath, confusion or change in state of awareness, wounds that are slow to heal or fungus infection.

If you feel one or more of these symptoms, consult your doctor.

What can be the complications of diabetes? There is blood circulation damage, kidney damage, eye diseases, nerve damage and heart problems like heart attack or stroke.

Several actions can be taken to delay these complications as much as possible, like good lifestyle habits or taking the right medication.

This is why doctors follow kids and teenagers who are predisposed to do diabetes, to make change their habits earlier and avoid them to have those kinds of problems for the rest of their life.

 Only 26,9 million of people are diagnosed and 7,3 million are not. For prediabetes, 88 million people aged 18 years or older have prediabetes (34.5% of the adult US population).

This is why diabetes is constantly followed by doctors, on the diabetic patients and the one who are predisposed to be.