Juvenile diabetes
Ekramullah Chowdhury, On e-mail
Type 1 juvenile diabetes is becoming widespread in developed world and may hit Bangladesh soon. The diabetes we generally see in Bangladesh is type 2 diabetes, which is mostly an inherited disease carried over by generations. But the type 1 diabetes occurs when the pancreas is failing to produce any insulin to help body cell to absorb glucose from blood. Type 1 diabetes develops when some recently developed anti-body (within the body) accidentally destroys the beta cell, thinking that it is a foreign cell. This beta cell of the pancreas has the responsibility of producing insulin. So far, doctors do not have any conclusive explanation of this type of internal destruction, but doctors and researchers are working day and night to restrict this widespread juvenile diabetes in the developed world. They are treating this lifelong disability condition in many aspects such as, better patient management, lifestyle management, improving the experience of blood testing and insulin intake and finally the cure of this condition by beta cell regeneration, pancreas transplantation, artificial pancreas transplantation, beta cell transplantation, etc.In Bangladesh we have so far seen that diabetes happens mostly to the elderly and they have to stop eating all kinds of sweets and do regular exercises. Most of the diabetic conditions we have experienced are mainly type 2 and exercise and healthy lifestyle do improve this condition. Because the cause of type 1 diabetes is different and it can even happen to children as young as 2 (so far I have seen), as a society we should start preparing ourselves to manage this type of diabetes. Of course, the family may require a few days of training and counselling process to face all sorts of challenges they should be prepared for and our health system should take care of those things.
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