Interesting read:
9 Likes
That’s interesting that the underlying cause is poor nutrition, especially lack of enough protein. I have one issue with this article. This:
Diabetes is an umbrella term for a range of conditions that result in raised blood sugar levels, but the underlying causes vary widely.
Diabetes is an umbrella term for 9 different diseases, it just means siphon which describes the common symptoms of excessive thirst (polydipsia) and urination (polyuria). The 4 diabetes insipidus do not affect blood glucose management, the kidneys fail to conserve water properly.
Using an adjective as a noun is lazy and leads to misunderstanding. I know that DI is relatively rare, but this laziness extends to DM with people including doctors not being specific as to what type.
Rant off! 
9 Likes
I’m diabetic; I suffer from diabetes.
Unfortunately English is a bit of a bugger about this; I certainly do that all the time.
So do you have polydipsia and polyuria with normal blood glucose levels? Then you have one of 4 diabetes insipidus.
Of do you have polydipsia, polyuria and hyperglycemia? That would be one of several diabetes mellitus.
Is is caused by your immune system killing the Beta cells? Then it is Type 1 DM.
Or was it caused by pancreatic damage from radiotherapy, pancreatic cancer, cystic fibrosis or acute pancreatitis? Then it is T3cDM.
Or this most common caused by inherited cellular resistance to accept insulin? Than it is T2DM.
There is this new designation Tyoe 5DM
Or it could be monogenic DM such as MODY and neonatal DM.
It’s not that English is a bugger of a language (It is) but rather that we are too lazy to be specific.assuming that people know what we are saying, writing.
Sorry for the diatribe on diamatters, but I spent a career where communications had to be specific and not vague.
.
4 Likes
Not marketing then. Or yet no; marketing has to be very specific, it has to create a particular feeling regardless of any fact. So, yes, when “diabetes” is used to describe anything other than a very loose class of symptoms (excessive urination) it’s not a functional communication for diabetics.
It is very functional for people who have something to sell, whether for money or for votes or just because they want to be upvoted for their incredible ability to get upvoted on Reddit (etc.)
Even in the army there are people who care not to communicate other than vaguely and still get promoted.
Absolutely not, when I worked in R&D product development our enemy was sales. They would promise customers the impossible and we would have to jump through flaming hoops to give the client something that would approach what sales has sold the customer.
I remember Type 1s complaining that they needed a new name for their disease because people were assuming T2DM, The solution is to always call it by its full name, Type 1 ,autoimmune diabetes mellitus. That’s not as difficult as the mouthful of some diseases.
I know this is a losing battle
4 Likes
Nah, I think T1 does work. The battle I want to fight is “T2”, which is the grabbag of a whole load of different conditions none of which share a container. So I’m a T1, a fully developed T1; not a LADA which is almost impossible to distinguish symptomatically from some things in the T2 grabbag.
I don’t want to see the people around me named by an adjective. I don’t want to see the people around me named by a symptom. T1 is a fairly accurate name; it’s not a symptom. Contrary to what you have experienced I have experienced people who clearly are not T1 claiming that name for themselves. I’ve also experienced people who are labelled T2, or, indeed, diabetic, who have complex conditions that I think I can start to understand.
I’m very motivated to understand. My wife is now T2, two out of her three siblings are, her mother is (and is now blind) her father never suffered from diabetes; he died of a cancer. The diagnosis is a convenient excuse.
So I have a different point of view. “T5” might be marketing, but “T2” is ignorance akimbo.
Recently I noted that FUdiabetes wasn’t like some other disease related web forum in that there was a lack of rancor here.
I need to see some proof that T2DM is grabbag. My reading of scientific papers inndicate that T2DM is the result of inherited genetic variants that cause liver, fat and skeletal muscle cells to abnormally resist the attachment of insulin on those cell types receptors.
This results in high blood glucose levels leading to high blood insulin levels, high triglycerides which are stored in fat cells. It is slow much slower than T11 LADA DM. It has all the attendant damage of the other types of DM.
Before the medical profession became more active in testing fBG it probably went undiagnosed with many patients dying of heart attacks, strokes or kidney failure.
only things in the T2DM bag are gestational DM which occurs in pregnancy and prediabetes. Both are at high risk of developing T2DM.
But @jbowler I suppose I am a marketers dream. In 35 year history since diagnose with a fBG of 143mg/dl and a HbA1c of 14.5 % I spent 10 years with normal BG and HbA1c. Then as is normal for T2DM it progressed and I began Metformin slowly ramping up to the maximum dose, Then I startbasal insulin, later MDI and currently on a pump. From early on to this day I eat a proper diet and exercise daily.
Now I will admit that the pushing of so many T2DM drugs is excessive, but the disease is real.
Edit I was diagnosed with fBG of 443mg/dl not 143. Lucky T2DM is less prone to DKA.
2 Likes