Understanding Diabetes
Whether you are newly diagnosed or a long-time diabetes manager, this website is your empowering destination for reliable information, practical tools, and a supportive community.
Learning about diabetes can feel overwhelming, but you’re not alone! This website is your partner in understanding how your body uses food for energy. We’ll explore what diabetes means, discover healthy eating habits, and learn fun ways to stay active. Join us on this journey to becoming a diabetes master!
Diabetes is a chronic (long-lasting) health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy. Imagine your body is a giant playground! You use energy to run, jump, and swing on the swings, just like the cells in your body use energy to do all sorts of things to keep you healthy. This energy comes from sugar called glucose, which travels in your bloodstream.
Things get tricky here: insulin is like the slide that lets the sugar get into your cells. In diabetes, something goes wrong with this slide. There are two main ways this can happen:
- Slide malfunction: This is kind of like the slide being broken. In type 1 diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin, so the sugar gets stuck in your bloodstream and can’t reach the cells that need it for energy.
- Sleepy cells: Sometimes the cells in your body don’t hear the “whoosh” sound of the slide. In type 2 diabetes, your body still makes insulin, but the cells don’t respond to it as well as they should. This also leads to sugar getting stuck in the bloodstream.
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