In order to understand the disease we firstly need to know about insulin. Insulin is a hormone. The role of insulin is to convert the food we eat into various useful substances, discarding everything that is wasteful. It is the job of insulin to see that the useful substances are put to best use for our well-being. The useful substances are used for building cells, are made ready for immediate expenditure as energy and also stored for later energy expenditure. The cause of diabetes is an absolute or lack of the hormone insulin.
As a result of this ack of insulin the processes that involve converting the foods we eat into various useful substances does not occur. Insulin comes from the beta cells which are located in the pancreas. In the case of diabetes type I almost all of the beta cells have been destroyed. Therefore daily injections of insulin become essential to life. Health implications of diabetes type I One of the products that is of vital importance in our bodies is glucose, a simple carbohydrate sugar which is needed by virtually every part of our body as fuel to function.
Insulin controls the amount of glucose distributed to vital organs and also the muscles. In diabetics due to the lack of insulin and therefore the control of glucose given to different body parts they face death if they don’t inject themselves with insulin daily. Since strict monitoring of diabetes is needed for the control of the disease, little room is left for carelessness. As a result diabetic patients are susceptible to many other diseases and serious conditions if a proper course of treatment is not followed.
Other diseases a diabetic is open to: Cardiovascular disease, stroke, Peripheral artery isease, gangrene, kidney disease, blindness, hypertension, nerve damage, impotence etc. Basically there is an increased incident of infection in diabetic sufferers. Therefore special care needs to be taken to decrease the chances of getting these other serious diseases. What is physical activity? (Bouchard 1988) States that physical activity is any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles resulting in energy expenditure. Therefore this includes sports and leisure activities of all forms. Why do we need physical activity in our lives? Physical activity and exercise helps tune the “human machine”, our bodies.
Imagine a car constantly driven only to stop for fuel. It would be a client for all sorts of damage, rusting, oil leaking, dehydration and the chances are most likely it would die in the middle of the road not long after. This is what the body would be like if we didn’t exercise at all. We would be and as a result of todays lifestyle many of us are, the perfect target to all kinds of diseases and infections. For those of us who are carrier of some disease or illness we are still encouraged to exercise by our physicians if we have the strength to.
This is to help make our organs, uscles, bones and arteries more efficient and better equipped to fight against the disease or illness. This is our way of counter attacking. And if we are still healthy then we reduce the chances of getting an illness or a disease. Recently insulin injections have become available to dependant patients. However in the pre-insulin era physical exercise was one of the few therapies available to physicians in combating diabetes. For an IDDM carrier to benefit from exercise they need to be well aware of their body and the consequences of exercising.
If an IDDM carrier has no real control over their situation and just exercise without considering their diet, time of insulin intake, type of exercise, duration of the exercise and the intensity, then the results can be very hazardous to the patient. In the first journal article that I used for this part of the research (Sutton 1981) had conducted an investigation on “drugs used in metabolic disorders”. The article is designed to provide some background information on previous beliefs and research conducted early this century. As well as his own investigations conducted during the beginning of the 1980’s.
He has compared the results and came to the same conclusion as the investigations done early in this century. Sutton’s findings show that decrease in blood glucose following an insulin injection was magnified when the insulin was followed by physical activity/exercise (see figure 1). This shows that if a person gets involved in physical activity or exercise after insulin the volume of glucose drops dramatically. This leads to symptoms of hypoglycemia. The reason this occurs is that glucose uptake by muscles increase during exercise, in spite of no change or even a diminishing plasma insulin concentration.
As a result of this type of information we know now that if a patient is not controlled through a good diet and program then they could put themselves in danger. A person who might be poorly maintained and ketotic will become even more ketotic and hypoglycimic. Good nutrition is of great importance to any individual especially one that exercises. In the case of diabetes even more consideration must go into the selection of food before and after exercise. Doctors suggest large intakes of carbohydrates before exercise for diabetes carriers to meet the glucose needs of the muscles.
