Type 2 Diabetes Affects Over 50 Million Americans Today

Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for almost 95 percent of all diabetes cases and affects in excess of fifty million Americans, is mainly seen in adults over 40 years of age. Nowadays, however, it is also being diagnosed more and more at younger ages, and even in quite young children.

Type 2 diabetes symptoms are frequently quite mild in the early stages of the condition and you can be suffering from type 2 diabetes for many months or years before it is diagnosed. It is however a potentially very serious condition and undiagnosed type 2 diabetes can result in a variety of serious complications including renal failure, blindness, the inability of wounds to heal and coronary artery disease.

Figures suggest that about one in five adults above the age of 65 in the US is suffering from type 2 diabetes. The condition is more prominent amongst, Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics and Non-Hispanic Whites and is somewhat more common in older women than men.

The origin of type 2 diabetes is something of a mystery and, although it is said that there is a genetic basis to the disease this is a lot less less clearly evident than it is for type 1 diabetes. Evidence does however clearly show that environmental factors play a large part in the development of type 2 diabetes and this is particularly true in the case of obesity, a lack of exercise and a sedentary lifestyle.

A lot of people believe that type 1 and type 2 diabetes are the same thing and that the difference lies merely in the name, with type 1 diabetes being used when referring to the disease in childhood and type 2 diabetes referring to the disease in adults. This in not however the case and, although there are various similarities, type 1 and type 2 diabetes are quite different conditions and require very different types of treatment.

In the case of type 1 diabetes the body cannot produce insulin, which is necessary for the transfer of glucose (the body's principle source of energy) from the blood into the muscles and other cells of the body. In the case of type 2 diabetes the difficulty is not that the body is unable to produce insulin but that the body becomes resistant to insulin.

Currently there is no way to cure type 2 diabetes which is a chronic condition and treatment is therefore designed to manage the disease to lower the number of complications many of which can be life-threatening. In addition, treatment is designed to maintain the best possible quality of life for the sufferer.

In the first instant, sufferers from type 2 diabetes are treated with a very carefully tailored program of diet and exercise (which includes a weight loss program where this is required) and this can be extremely effective in controlling glucose levels in the blood and can generally improve a patient's sensitivity to insulin considerably. If this treatment does not prove to be successful, or in cases in which the disease progresses, it is normally treated with a range of medication.

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