Type two diabetes is a condition which is widespread to the point of epidemic proportions. It generally comes hand in hand with obesity and it’s now said that nearly three-quarters of type two diabetics are obese. This is a startling correlation and it can’t be ignored. Diabetes is, in many ways, one of the largest dangers for those who are overweight or obese and quite often the damage the condition does isn’t noticed until it’s far too late. Blindness and amputation are two of the nastiest things awaiting a type two diabetic who doesn’t control their condition and for those who let it get totally out of hand, death awaits at the end of a long and painful road.
Essentially, type two diabetes is different from type one diabetes in that patients suffering it don’t generally require insulin treatments. It’s caused when the body develops a resistance to insulin and it can be managed through the use of careful diet and moderate exercise. It can take some time to get used to the way of life which type two diabetes necessitates but once you have, you can live a fairly normal life. Type one diabetics don’t actually produce their own insulin and as such they need to inject it.
One of the only good things about type two diabetes being so widespread is that a lot of time, money and man hours are poured into researching better ways to treat it. Scientists have recently discovered than a certain strain of ‘bad’ bacteria has some interesting properties, some of which might be incredibly helpful for the management of type two diabetes. It’s called Heliocobacter pylori and it’s commonly found in the stomach where it can do damage but generally doesn’t. H.pylori is known to cause diarrhea and has the potential to contribute towards gastrointestinal ulcers. It now appears that as well as all the negatives the bacteria has a positive reaction on chronic inflammation, autoimmune conditions and allergies. It’s also been shown to lessen the body’s innate levels of insulin resistance which would massively help type two diabetics manage their conditions.
It might take a while for researchers to work out a way of conferring the positive sides of H.pylori without the negative ones, but this is an exciting step in the right direction!
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