Question: i was wondering do u no how dibities starts and what drugs can help slow the prosess down :)

Julia Griffen answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Super question Kayla..very relevant! I’ll go into detail….

Diabetes is a condition where you blood contains too much sugar (specifically glucose), because you body cannot process it properly. Diabetes sufferers cannot produce any or enough insulin. Insulin is a hormone made in the pancreas that allows glucose to move into the body’s cells to be used, resulting in a build up of suagrs in the blood.

There are two types of diabetes.
Type I: when a person can produce no insulin. Type 1 diabetes can develop at any age, usually before 40, and especially in childhood. Type 1 diabetes accounts for between 5-15% of all people with diabetes and is treated by daily insulin injections, a healthy diet and regular physical activity.

Type 2: Develops when the body can still make some insulin, but not enough, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly. Type 2 diabetes usually appears in people over the age of 40. It often appears from the age of 25. Type 2 diabetes accounts for between 85 – 95 % of all people with diabetes and is treated with a healthy diet and increased physical activity. In addition to this, medication and/or insulin is often required.

The compounds I’m trying (I say trying as I havn’t made them yet!) are for type 2 diabetes. They are compounds which act to reduce and control the amount of sugar in the blood by controling how our body digests it.
The sugar that we eat exists in many complex forms and needs to be broken down, or digested by enzymes. If we can reduce the activity of the specific enzyme that makes glucose then we can control the amount of glucose that enters the body…
We reduce the activity by designing drugs that look very similar to glucose but have slight differences, and react with the enzyme instead of the food we eat, and therefore inhibit (or reduce) the enzyme, therefore reducing the amount of glucose in the blood.

So these are drugs to help treat diabetes.

To be honest with you the best way to prevent diabetes is a healthy lifestyle, excersise and a good diet! No medicine will ever beat that!

Hope that helps.. if you’d like me to expand anything just ask 🙂