Diabetes Overview

What Is Diabetes?

If your doctor recently diagnosed you with diabetes, you're one of nearly 16 million people in the United States -- nearly one in 17 people -- who have diabetes. About 2,200 new cases are diagnosed each day.

Technically, this disease is known as "diabetes mellitus" -- diabetes from the Greek for siphon, to describe the excessive thirst and urination characteristic of this condition, and mellitus from the Latin for honey; diabetic urine is filled with sugar and is sweet. Physicians and medical books use the term diabetes mellitus, but colloquially, this disease is simply called diabetes.

People who have diabetes either don't produce insulin or can't efficiently use the insulin they produce.

There are many types of diabetes, but the three most common are:

• Type 1
• Type 2
• Gestational diabetes

All are a little different. But everyone with diabetes has one thing in common: Little or no ability to move sugar -- or glucose -- out of the blood into the cells, where it becomes the body's primary fuel.

Everyone has glucose in their blood, whether or not they have diabetes. This glucose comes from food. When we eat, the digestive process breaks down food into glucose, which is absorbed into the blood in the small intestine.

People who don't have diabetes rely on insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas, to move glucose from the blood into the body's billions of cells. But people who have diabetes either don't produce insulin or can't efficiently use the insulin they produce. Without insulin, they can't move glucose into their cells. Glucose accumulates in the blood -- a condition called hyperglycemia ("hyper" = too much, "glycemia" = glucose in the blood) -- and over time, can cause very serious health problems.

Scientists don't know exactly what causes diabetes, but it appears to result from a combination of genetics and environmental factors, including viral infections, poor diet, and sedentary lifestyle.

Currently, diabetes can't be cured, but the good news is that the disease can be managed. People with diabetes can live fulfilling, healthy lives.