Did you inherit your diabetes ?

Pick up a newspaper these days or turn on your TV, and there is a more than a fair chance obesity will feature in a news article, swiftly followed by diabetes getting mentioned. If the article contains pictures or film, a hugely overweight person well into the morbidly obese range is featured. Joe public gets the impression all diabetics stuffed themselves with cakes and junk and got what was coming to them. If the newspaper such as the Daily Mail has a comment section, you don’t have to wait long before a clearly disgruntled type one diabetic comes along saying ‘hey don’t lump me in with those type two fat gits, I am a type one, I was never fat’ or words to that effect. I can see their point of view. As far as I can tell weight or lifestyle has nothing to do with type one diabetes, the experts say the body turns on itself and beta cells are destroyed, no one knows why. It’s a pity the media does not clearly state when they give diabetics and overweight people a mauling, type one diabetes has nothing to do with lifestyle or weight and pretty much by the hand of god or fate, anyone could have become a type one diabetic, maybe, because not enough is known about type one or type two diabetes, and the media appears to know nothing. 

So, what about those cake munching type two’s ? was gluttony and sloth the reason for our downfall ? I don’t think so, well I would say that wouldn’t I. If you look at the facts around 10-20% of type two diabetics have never been over weight. Also, the majority of over weight people never become diabetics. At diagnosis many type two diabetics have three times the plasma insulin levels as a slim non diabetic, so lack of insulin is not the problem. The problem for many is insulin resistance, the $64000 question, why do some become insulin resistant ? I believe genetics play a very big part in this, perhaps the main reason. I found some articles you can see below, as you can see, genetics play a big roll in diabetes.

Eddie

Of 96 pairs of identical twins, 65 were concordant (both diabetic) and 31 discordant (one twin diabetic). When diabetes developed in the index twin before the age of 40 half the pairs were discordant, whereas in twins in whom diabetes developed after the age of 40 almost all pairs were concordant. In 75% of concordant twins the interval between diagnoses was under 3 years. It is suggested that the unaffected twins of the discordant pairs will probably remain non-diabetic, since half the pairs had been discordant for over 10 years, and most had a normal glucose tolerance which had not deteriorated. The concordant diabetics showed the usual tendency to produce heavy babies before they became diabetic, but the unaffected twins did not. A family history of diabetes was common in concordant twins and rare in discordant twins. Diabetes in discordant twins may be mainly environmentally determined, although obesity, diet, parity, or other ætiological factors have not been incriminated, and the unaffected identical twins of diabetics are not "prediabetics"

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Out of 100 people with Type 1 diabetes, 80 have no family members with the disease. The remaining 20 people have at least one family member with diabetes. Although most people in the population have a 0.4 percent chance of developing Type 1 diabetes, the risk increases to about two percent if your mother has diabetes and six percent if your father or siblings have Type 1 diabetes. If your sibling with diabetes is a fraternal twin your risk increases to 11 percent and it increases to roughly 50 percent if your identical twin has diabetes.

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