What is Type 1 Diabetes?

Diabetes is a disease we hear a lot about...on the news, in pharmaceutical commercials, from our doctors.  But the diabetes that's being discussed is typically Type 2.  According to the American Diabetes Association, approximately 29 million Americans have diabetes.  Roughly 5% of those cases are Type 1.

What's the difference?  Type 2 is the diabetes you usually hear about, and means someone has insulin resistance.  Their body makes insulin, but can't use it as well as it needs to.  In many cases it can be managed through diet and exercise to keep blood glucose from being too high.

What is Type 1 diabetes (T1D)?  From JDRF:  "Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease in which a person's pancreas stops producing insulin, a hormone that enables people to get energy from food.  It occurs when the body's immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, called beta cells.  While its causes are not yet entirely understood,scientists believe that both genetic factors and environmental triggers are involved."

So what does that mean in reality?  Without insulin, you die.  At its very core, that is the simple reality of T1D.  In practice, what that meant for me was that over the course of the first several months in 2014 I was losing weight pretty quickly when I shouldn't have been.  On a completely unrelated trip to the ER that spring, blood work showed that my blood sugar was at 300.  I found out later that a number that high means you're diabetic.  The only question is what kind of diabetic...

Because of my age, the assumption was that I had Type 2.  That was certainly my assumption, because like a lot of people I had no idea adults could develop Type 1.  When I got in to see an endocrinologist about a month later, he had a different theory.  Based on a lack of family history and my relative size, he was convinced I had Type 1.  Another round of blood work confirmed his diagnosis, and my T1D journey began.  My pancreas was definitely broken!