What Is Diabetes?

The word diabetes followed by the term mellitus (the Latin word for "honey sweet") refers to a metabolic disorder characterized by consistently higher than normal blood sugar values. The symptoms and effects of the disorder vary considerably from case to case. The differences can be purely quantitative , i.e. the blood sugar values are only mildly elevated or they are very high indeed; the urinary sugar excretion may be minimal or may amount to several ounces of glucose per day. One could list many such variations in degree of metabolic severity. However, the world's diabetic population divides it self along more qualitative lines into two major categories. Ten to fifteen per cent of diabetics absolutely require  insulin injections (one or more times per day) in order to control their blood sugar and urine sugar levels; otherwise they will develop "diabetic ketosis", "acidosis" and eventually fall into a coma. Eighty-five to ninety per cent of all diabetics, however, could control their metabolic aberration by suitable dietary regimes alone and still nor succumb to acidosis and/or coma.

It is important to keep the above distinctions in mind because on such considerations will depend the proper approach to dietary treatment.

The first group of diabetics - the ketosis-prone, insulin dependent patients - usually experience the onset of the disorder before age twenty. Thus, theirs is known as juvenile diabetes.

Diabetes is a familial disease, i.e. hereditary factors probably play a role, although the precise genetic mechanism is not completely understood. Diabetes does seem to be a "multigenic" disorder, involving more than one defective gene. It is somewhat more frequent in women than in men. It may come into the open in times of physical stress, pregnancy, lactation, excessive, weight gain, and after the ingestion of medications such as oral contraceptive drugs and certain diuretics.