Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (usually called just Type 1 Diabetes) has had several names in the past: it used to be called Childhood-Onset Diabetes, Insulin-Dependent Diabetes, and sometimes Juvenile-Onset Diabetes. The name "Type 1 Diabetes" has been agreed by the international medical community. Type 1 Diabetes accounts for 5% to 10% of all diabetes cases.

Type 1 is usually first diagnosed in children and young adults (all the way up to 40 years old). Their pancreas does not make insulin – this is usually because the beta cells in the Islets of Langerhans in your pancreas have been destroyed by your immune system. This destruction of the beta cells is possibly because a virus triggers your immune system to attack the pancreatic cells after an infection of some sort – the precise reasons are still not entirely clear. With Type 1, insulin injections are needed to control your blood sugar levels.

There is no cure for Type 1 diabetes – you will have to manage it by injections of insulin for the rest of your life, with daily blood glucose monitoring.

You will have to balance the levels of insulin in your blood with the amount and type of food you eat, in order to keep the correct amount of sugar in your blood and make sure the energy in that sugar gets to the right places in your blood – because your body cannot do it on its own any more. If your sugar level is too high then you will succumb to hyperglycaemia; too low and you get hypoglycaemia (note the subtle difference in spelling, but there is a huge difference in what it means). Hyperglycaemia and hypoglycaemia are both serious conditions and should be treated immediately.