Essay on Diabetes for Students | 500 Words Informative Essay

500+ Words Essay on Diabetes

Ram and his uncle, Mr Shyam, decided to have a visit to their family doctor. Ram, a 16-year-old boy, is thin in stature; while his uncle, Mr Shyam, is a 45-year-old man with a little bit of weight around. The purpose of their visit is not the same. When they went to the doctor, Ram begins with what he is experiencing for a few weeks:

• He is thirsty all the time and frequently goes to the toilet to urinate.
• Despite being thin, Ram is experiencing weight loss.
• And he’s not able to play sports, because of getting tired too soon.

While Mr Shyam, on the other hand, is there, just for a routine health check-up. The doctor advises both of them to have a blood test, and meet him the next time. After the blood-test, when they went to the doctor, the doctor announced that both of them were diagnosed with the same disease! They were shocked by the doctor’s words, as they were not experiencing the same symptoms. And then, the doctor explained to them the disease, named “Diabetes”.

Diabetes Mellitus (DM), or simply, Diabetes, is one of the most common diseases of the world. One can have diabetes and not know why they have it! Around 10% of the world’s population, suffers from diabetes, and nearly 1 million Indians die due to diabetes, every year! 

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a group of diseases, which results in too much sugar in the blood. It is a non-communicable disease, i.e. it doesn’t spread directly from human to human. So, how does one gets Diabetes? Let’s understand that:

How does Diabetes occur?

When we eat food, our body breaks it into various components, and one such component is “Glucose”. Glucose is a necessary ingredient for us to stay energized. So, when this glucose is formed in the stomach, it is sent to the blood, so that the blood cells (the tiny blood particles) can eat up the glucose and give us energy. 

But the blood cells are like locked doors! Hence we need “keys” to open these locked doors. Here comes our friend, “Insulin”, which is formed in the pancreas, a small organ below the stomach. Insulin acts as our key to open these locked doors, i.e. the blood cells. And then, the “unlocked” blood cells eat up the Glucose, which decreases the amount of glucose present in the blood, which in turn, also decreases the Insulin levels. By eating up this glucose, they convert this glucose into energy. Everything goes fine if this balance is maintained. But that is not always the case! 

Types of Diabetes

There are two ways, in which this balance can break. This gives us two types of diabetes:

Type-1 Diabetes: This type of diabetes occurs most often in people under 40’s, especially teenagers, and hence it’s also named “Juvenile Diabetes ”. It occurs when the Pancreas is either producing little or no Insulin, at all. If there is no Insulin, then how will the blood-cells open up to the incoming Glucose? This leads to unused Glucose in the blood. So, what happens to this unused Glucose? Well, they are flushed down into the toilet, when we urinate. Hence, these are the symptoms that a patient suffering from Type-1 Diabetes can show:  

• Frequent Urination: As the glucose is not being utilised in the blood, the patient tends to go to urinate more frequently than normal.
• Increased Thirst: As the patient needs to flush down the unused glucose by urinating, he or she tends to drink more water and hence becomes more thirsty.
• Tiredness: The body, still didn’t get the energy from Glucose as the blood cells were not able to eat them up, due to no insulin. Hence, due to lack of energy, the patient gets a lot tired, despite less activity.
• Weight loss: As the body was not able to get the energy from the Glucose, it gets the energy from other stored energy from the body, which results in weight loss.
• Other symptoms: Blurred vision, slow healing, headache, stress, etc.

Type-2 Diabetes: It happens mostly to over-weight people, who are over their 40’s, but can occur to people with normal weight also. Under this diabetes, the excess fat clogs the blood cells, and hence, the Insulin is not able to properly unlock the cells. Again, this leads to the unused Glucose, and the same process as of Type-1 Diabetes is repeated. The symptoms of Type-2 diabetes are the same as that of Type-1. The thing to note here is that Type-2 Diabetes shows its symptoms very slowly. Typically, a person can live a normal life up to 10 years, without experiencing any symptoms. 

Let’s get back to our story of Ram and Mr Shyam. We can conclude now that, Ram was suffering from Type-1 Diabetes, and Mr Shyam was suffering from Type-2 Diabetes. 

India currently represents 49% of the World’s diabetes burden. What is the cause of such a high prevalence of this disease?

Causes of Diabetes

There are various causes of the increasing number of cases of diabetes. Some of them are listed below:

1. Genetics: It plays an important part in deciding if a person has diabetes or not. If one’s parents were diabetic patients, then he/she needs to be cautious.
2. Rapid Urbanisation and changing lifestyle: With increasing comforts due to technology, people are tending towards low activity and sedentary lifestyle; due to this, there’s an increasing amount of obesity, which is a leading cause of Type-2 diabetes.
3. Rising Pollution levels: Studies have shown that, as fine dust particles enter your body, it hampers with your insulin production capacity.
4. Smoking and Alcohol: Smokers are 30-40% more susceptible to diabetes, as it makes body insulin resistant.

Impacts

Due to such high prevalence of Diabetes, it is more likely to have huge impacts on various spheres of life. Persons suffering from diabetes are more likely to have various respiratory diseases, kidney failure, etc. This disease also impacts a person’s work productivity, leading to fewer job opportunities. 

Prevention

Despite such severe effects of this disease on a person’s life, some ways can lead to prevention of this disease, like a healthy diet, making exercise a part of life, avoiding foods with high levels of sugar, etc. 

Each year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) celebrates World Diabetes Day on 14th November, where they spread awareness about this disease. So, the world’s not over for a person suffering from diabetes, instead, by practising a healthy lifestyle, a person can fight this disease off. Still, we should always be cautious, because,

“Diabetes feels sweet in the beginning, but it comes with a needle.”