Each year 30,000 Americans are diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and over
13,000 or whom are children. That's 35 children every day. 16 million Americans
have diabetes and of these, 5.4 are undiagnosed. Diabetes kills one American
every three minutes. It afflicts 120 million people worldwide and a new case of
diabetes is diagnosed every 40 seconds. This number is estimated to skyrocket to
300 million by the year 2025. Diabetes does not discriminate and it can strike
anyone at any age and all ethnic populations. There is currently no known cure for
Diabetes is a chronic, genetically determined, debilitating disease. There
are two major types of diabetes: Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 (juvenile) is caused
by the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas and is
usually diagnosed in childhood. Basically, this means that your blood sugar is too
high. Your blood always has some sugar in it because the body needs sugar for
energy. But too much sugar in the blood is not good for you health. Your body
changes most of the food you eat into sugar. Your blood carries the sugar to your
body cells. The sugar needs insulin to get into the body cells. Insulin is a chemical
(a hormone) made in a part of the body called the pancreas. The pancreas releases
insulin into the blood. Insulin helps the sugar from food get into body cells. If your
body doesn't make enough insulin or the insulin doesn't work right, the sugar
cannot get into the cells. It stays in the blood. This makes your blood sugar level
high, causing you to have diabetes. 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 gl...