Читать книгу Diabetes For Dummies - Рубин Алан Л. - Страница 16

In This Chapter

▶ Paying attention to your pancreas

▶ Comparing type 1 and type 2 diabetes

▶ Being aware of other types of diabetes

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to your pancreas. This shy little organ – to which you’ve probably never given any attention – can rear its lovely head at entirely unexpected moments. (You probably didn’t even know that your pancreas has a head and a tail, but it does. Now you’ve broken the ice!) Most of the time, your pancreas hides behind your stomach, quietly doing its work by assisting with digestion first and then helping to make use of the digested food. The information in this chapter should put you on closer terms with your pancreas, which is good, because you need your pancreas as much as it needs you. In one way or another, the pancreas plays a role in all of the various types of diabetes.

Here’s the good news: You can prevent diabetes. Here’s the bad news: You can’t do so quite as easily as you may like. Your best method for preventing diabetes is to pick your parents carefully, but that method is slightly impractical, even with modern technology.

In general, you can prevent a disease if it meets two requirements. First, you have to be able to identify if you are at high risk for getting the disease. Second, some treatments or actions must exist that can definitely reduce the occurrence of the disease. This chapter shows you how to identify whether you’re at risk for type 1 or type 2 diabetes, and it covers definite actions that you can take to prevent both of these types of diabetes.

This chapter helps you get a clear understanding of your type of diabetes, how it relates to the other types of diabetes, and how the failure of your friendly pancreas to do its assigned job can lead to a host of unfortunate consequences. (I cover these consequences in detail in Part II.)