{"id":843,"date":"2009-09-21T08:32:25","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T08:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=843"},"modified":"2015-12-30T06:06:51","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T11:06:51","slug":"the-science-of-diabetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=843","title":{"rendered":"The Science of Diabetes: An Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Insulin\"<\/a>When you truly know a person, you know how he thinks and you can predict his actions.\u00a0 When you truly know yourself, you understand the ebbs and flows of your moods and passions.\u00a0 But a disease like diabetes throws a wrench in this.\u00a0 Your body begins to do things that are alien.\u00a0 You don\u2019t feel like yourself.<\/p>\n

We researchers and health care professionals use scientific knowledge to create therapies and predict disease outcomes. For the non-scientist, however, understanding the science behind the disease is every bit as useful.\u00a0 Scientific understanding is, as it was in ancient magic traditions, the act of identifying the true name of the thing. \u00a0If you know a disease\u2019s true name, that is, if you comprehend it, you know how it will behave and you will understand exactly why you feel the way you do.\u00a0 You can replace the fear and worry about your symptoms with understanding.\u00a0 Knowledge gives you power over your condition.<\/p>\n

Disease doesn\u2019t just rob you of your health, it also robs you of your dignity, which so often is wrapped up with capability.\u00a0 Heart disease and asthma can seriously decrease one\u2019s physical abilities.\u00a0 Depression and epilepsy can likewise decrease one\u2019s mental abilities. Diabetes, however, is different. While there are several forms of diabetes (each its own very unique disease), ultimately, no form of diabetes has to limit a patient.\u00a0 Managing diabetes comes down to an enforced healthy lifestyle.\u00a0 If a diabetic keeps his blood glucose levels in the acceptable range, apart from the (considerable) hassle of drug dosing, the disease will have almost no consequence. Unfortunately, failure to adhere to that healthy lifestyle can lead to significant consequences like blindness, kidney failure, amputations, and heart disease, to name a few. \u00a0But we can fight them and we can do this with the tools at hand.<\/p>\n

It is an easy thing to say \u201cwe can fight them\u201d.\u00a0 Actually doing it is altogether different.\u00a0 It requires an almost religious commitment and discipline.\u00a0 Finding time to exercise when the kids need to be taken to seven different events, and finding time to cook a healthy meal when you can\u2019t even find time to shop, is a huge issue.\u00a0 Understanding the science of diabetes will not give you the extra time you need to get on the elliptical trainer, but it will give you the knowledge of exactly what needs to be done and what is superfluous.\u00a0 At least we scientists would like to think so.<\/p>\n

The body, like all aspects of nature, is an incredibly beautiful thing.\u00a0 It is the appreciation of the beauty buried within the complexity that draws us biologists to continuously circle it, attempting but never achieving union.\u00a0 To understand diabetes we need to understand the body as a whole and I would claim that this act alone is worth the trouble.<\/p>\n

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Know yourself, know your diabetes. A biologist explains how understanding the nature of diabetes will lead to better management of the disease…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[34],"yoast_head":"\nScience of Diabetes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When you truly know yourself, you understand the ebbs and flows of your moods and passions. But a disease like diabetes throws a wrench in this. 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