Type one diabetes isn’t like type two. It’s not something which you’re going to get from eating the wrong things or getting too big, it’s something which you’ll be diagnosed with at a very young age. Once known as ‘early onset’ diabetes, type one is caused when an autoimmune reaction in the patient’s body kills off the beta cells in the pancreas. These beta cells are the bodies only way of producing insulin, without them there’s no way to produce it. As such, type one diabetics all require regular injections of insulin to survive.
Type one diabetics have to deal with their disease from such an early age that they don’t struggle nearly as hard with the lifestyle as type two diabetics may do. This is great for them but it’s also a little saddening, they’re stuck with the way of life because of a fluke of nature.
Recently, scientists have been looking at getting insulin into the body in different ways. One way which has shown great promise in rat-based lab trials has been the use of a nasal spray. The rats in question showed a lessened blood-sugar level for 24 hours after they received the insulin spray which is 15 hours longer than for the standard injection. The next step will bring this treatment method to a human set of subjects with the hope of making the lives of type one diabetics all over the world easier for good.
It could be some time before we see this in hospitals but the advantage of only needing to treat once a day as opposed to several times speaks volumes. It would mean that type one diabetics would have to plan around their condition that little bit less than they do now. Considering how dominate their lives often are by the disease, this can only be good news.
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