CHATER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Diabetes is a disease and also a disorder of glucose metabolism. Diabetes as defined by oxford dictionary, is a disease of the pancreas in which sugar and starchy foods cannot be properly absorbed.
Nelson and Cox (2000) stated that, diabetes mellitus caused by a deficiency in the secretion or action of insulin is defective. Under normal circumstances, some of the food people eat is converted into glucose during metabolism. Glucose is carried in the blood stream, and move into the cells where it is available as energy, through the action of a hormone called ‘INSULIN’. Insulin is the most important hormone that regulates the amount of glucose in the blood; it is the rate at which glucose is taken up by the tissues, and the conversion of glucose to glycogen.
People with diabetes do not produce enough insulin to move glucose into cells, or the body resistance to the insulin that is produced. In either case, the glucose builds up in the blood stream above 180g in the blood and is excreted in the urine.
1.1 TYPES OF DIABETES
The different types of diabetes are classified by the underlying insulin problem, they include:
i) Type one diabetes also called insulin dependent diabetes (IDDM). This is when a patient’s body produces little or no insulin, in this form; the body’s own immune system attacks itself destroying the cells that are responsible for creating insulin. This type one diabetes have been speculated that it may be caused by a combination of genetic and environment factors.