On
pages 23-48, Dr. Moalem describes diabetes
mellitus, a common chronic disease in which there are high levels of sugar,
known as glucose, in the blood. This disease relates to Big Idea 3 (Living
systems store, retrieve, transmit, and respond to information essential to life
processes.) In the body, insulin (a hormone made by the pancreas) regulates
blood sugar level in order to store glucose for fuel.
Define
diabetes mellitus and explain the differences between the three types of
diabetes.
Explain
the factoids of evidence that diabetes may be an evolved adaptation to the cold
and how diagnoses of diabetes today support this idea. How might your body's
response to cold differ depending on your ancestry? Based on what you know
about your own ancestry, explain how likely it is for you to have Type I or Type
II diabetes.
Research
the genes and inheritance that confer susceptibility to Type 1 diabetes, as well
as environmental factors that may help set off the illness. Explain how cold
air may turn on metabolic pathways involved in the genesis of Type 1 diabetes, and
relate these metabolic changes to those seen in animals that are tolerant to
cold. Finally, research how high levels of blood glucose prevent cells and
tissues from forming ice crystals on a molecular level.
(Taylor
Young, tyoung3@students.d125.org)
• Diabetes mellitus, often called sugar diabetes is caused by the inability of the body to use glucose, or produce insulin, the body’s main source of energy, properly. The word itself literally means passing through honey sweet. (24)There are three types of Diabetes Type 1 and 2, and gustational diabetes. Gustational diabetes occurs during the pregnancy period of a woman. Type 1 and 2 were previously called juvenile diabetes and adult-onset diabetes because although all types of diabetes have some genetics behind, which would mean that there is a code in the persons DNA that says “Diabetes!” but in type 2 diabetes, overeating and lack of physical activity are very important contributors. Meanwhile, for type 1 diabetes, it's more the exposure to toxins in the environment, possibly viruses, and other external factors that can increase risk to this form of diabetes. Since genes are passed down through the family line, because of meiosis which is the splitting of gametes to form 23 chromosomes. As far as DNA goes, the genes are transcribed and translated to replicate and pass down codes for hair color, eye color, height, body structure as well as genes that may or may not show up like a gene for schizophrenia or in this case diabetes, which can be triggered by environmental factors. My own genetic line carries a coding for diabetes therefore I have to be careful to not trigger it. My grandmother had diabetes, while she was here, therefore I have a higher tendency to be diabetic. I know I won’t have type 1 diabetes, since my insulin levels are perfectly normal, at this moment, yet if I were to indulge in cakes, even fruits although they do contain natural sugar, an over amount of any of these foods could cause my body to become, my gene could say oh uh turning myself on, you know have diabetes. Essentially, I have a higher tendency to become diabetic than those who don’t have people in the family who suffered from diabetes. For diabetes, eating sugar fatty foods can trigger type 2 diabetes gene to appear at whatever age and a large amount of stress can trigger the gene for schizophrenia. Because of the ability of the organisms to store, retrieve and transmit.. the topic is a great connection towards big idea 3. Diabetes affects the pancreas, which is an organ which produces insulin and distributes glucose throughout the body. According to survival of the sickest, "some researchers believe that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, which basically means that the body’s natural defense system incorrectly identifies certain cells as outside invaders and sets out to destroy them." Page 24. Since Type 1 diabetes is considered an autoimmune disease, what happens is that Insulin is produced in the pancreas by beta cells of the islets of Langerhans. The main source of energy for all cells and especially for brain cells is glucose. Insulin is necessary for glucose to get into cells and be used for energy production. After eating, the glucose level in blood rises, which leads to insulin being released from the pancreas. In a person with IMDM, beta cells of Langerhans are damaged by autoimmune inflammation, leading to an insufficiency of insulin. Some symptoms for type 1 diabetes include, Excessive urination, urination at night, thirst, dehydration. The kidneys are not able to return glucose back to blood when glucose increases above certain level. As a result, glucose appears in urine, taking with it lots of water. This results in frequent and excessive urination, which in turn causes intense thirst and dehydration and mineral loss. Weight loss: Because of the insufficient level of insulin, glucose cannot be used as an energy source. The body of a patient with IMDM therefore has to use fat and
ReplyDeletemuscles, which results in weight loss. The glucose level in blood rises and cells do not have enough energy for metabolism. Moving towards type 2, the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes is becoming increasingly common in U.S. kids and teens, especially in those who are overweight. Some studies report that between 8% and 45% of children who've been newly diagnosed with diabetes have the form known as type 2. Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 is the body not producing insulin, or the cells ignoring insulin. A recent study on rats showed that the brain is the first think affected by overeating, is the brain which then leads to no response for the insulin, needed for the body. This process causes an increase blood pressure which can be dangerous. The study was conducted by Dr. Buettner who holds a PhD in medicine, he was giving fatty foods to rats and seeing how they would react to it, he wanted to know why overeating eventually caused people to develop diabetes. He states “Recent studies suggest that once you overeat, your brain develops insulin resistance. Since brain insulin controls lipolysis in adipose tissue by reducing sympathetic nervous system outflow to adipose tissue, brain insulin resistance causes increased spillage of fatty acids from adipose tissue into the blood stream,. Increased fatty acids induce inflammation and that, in turn, can further worsen insulin resistance, which is the core defect in type 2 diabetes. They found that overeating impaired the ability of brain insulin to suppress glucose release from the liver and lipolysis in fat tissue. Similarly, short-term overeating in humans is known to produce comparable insulin resistance which could be explained by brain insulin resistance.” The reason why this applies to our own health is simply because rats have a similar organ structure to humans, hints why t godii can infect us coming from rats. Finally, Gustational diabetes during late pregnancy, about the 24th week or so, can be developed even if the lady has never had diabetes before, yet it doesn’t mean that she’ll stay with the condition even after giving birth, because during pregnancy, the body makes more hormones and goes through other changes, such as weight gain. These changes cause your body's cells to use insulin less effectively, a condition called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance increases the body's need for insulin. If the pancreas of the lady can't make enough insulin, she will have gestational diabetes. All pregnant women have some insulin resistance, is a physiological condition in which cells fail to respond to the normal actions of the hormone insulin, during late pregnancy. However, some women have insulin resistance even before they get pregnant, usually because they are overweight. These women start pregnancy with an increased need for insulin and are more likely to have gestational diabetes. Although diabetes is now a disease, at one point in our evolution having diabetes may have actually saved our lives. During the Ice Age period, our body can’t withstand temperatures below 32 for long periods of time, and since the Ice Age was going on for months our human population was slowly fading away, so our body quickly adapted to the conditions by forming a layer of fat around our body, which helped keep us warm. Cold conditions affect our nervous system in the sense that we can’t heat ourselves up disrupting the path. There is evidence that more people today have actually been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in the colder months than in the warmer months. “More Northern Hemisphere inhabitants are diagnosed with diabetes between November and February than between June and September, theoretically due to
ReplyDeletethe noticeable drop in temperature during the former period.” This also explains why we tend to gain weight over the colder months, to create a larger fat layer to warm our body in a natural way; of course it is also because of vitamin d diffidence. In the Ice Age periods, diabetes could have been developed in response to the severe climate change which a human is not naturally able to survive until type 1 diabetes came along. Insulin supply slowed down to almost nonexistent in the body during the Ice Age, since food during the last Ice Age was almost certainly limited, meaning that dietary blood sugar likely followed suit. Therefore, the insulin of a diabetic from this epoch may have never come close to reaching dangerous levels. The wood frog is an animal which at the touch of cold, it literally freezes itself until warmer months happen, which shows a possibility for the body to develop this trait. We all respond to different things, differently because we all have slight variations in our DNA yet we all need insulin to continue our body production yet too much is also dangerous yet in the Ice Age period, because the food was so scarce and there was no insulin, the body needed insulin so it developed what is now known as diabetes type 1, which raised our levels back up to normal allowing humanity to survive. Diabetes is a very common disease now a day, yet thanks to it we survived the Ice Age.
ReplyDeletehttp://autoimmune.pathology.jhmi.edu/diseases.cfm?systemid=3&diseaseid=23
http://kidshealth.org/kid/diabetes_basics/what/type1.html
http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/endocrine/type2.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017153911.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/DiabetesRiskFactors/story?id=3826450#.UW8wFrUXt8E
http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/gestational/
http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/gestational/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance
http://tanystropheus.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/ice-age-diabetics/
Carolina Diaz