Understanding Type 1 Diabetes

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In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

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❝I enjoy10almonds reading. What you need more articles about is type 1 diabetes❞

Glad you enjoy it!

You’re right that we haven’t written a lot about type 1 diabetes (henceforth: T1D), and the reason is that most people tend to be interested in:

• Things that pertain to them directly (e.g. health conditions they have)
• Things that might pertain to them (e.g. health conditions they fear getting)

So, we have a lot of articles about health conditions that are very common and/or become increasingly common as we get older, and therefore that everyone would do well to avoid.

In contrast, since T1D is usually diagnosed at a rather young age, our readers will tend to fall into one of the following two categories:

• People who do not have T1D and, being mostly older adults, less likely to get it now
• People who do have T1D and, as such, already know far more about it than we’re likely to include in a one-page article
  • Honorable mention: people who do not have T1D but do live with or otherwise spend a lot of time with someone who does, and thus learn a lot due by proximity and (hopefully) care for the other’s wellbeing

However! Perhaps we are overemphasizing a focus on direct usefulness, and underestimating general interest.

So, while we won’t have room to go into great depth, let’s address some important things:

It’s really quite different from type 2 diabetes

While type 2 diabetes is largely a matter of insulin resistance resulting in blood sugar imbalances (and thus can largely be controlled by dietary adjustments, for most people), T1D is an autoimmune disorder in which the pancreas (which normally produces insulin) goes to war with itself and produces no meaningful amount of insulin.

As a result, those with T1D rely on exogenous (“comes from outside”) insulin, and that’s not negotiable (until such time as a cure is found, but alas, that’s not yet).

Without exogenous insulin, blood sugar levels will rocket upwards (even if sugar consumption was minimal, the problem is that it has no way of getting out of the blood and into where it’s needed, so it just builds up), and this hyperglycemia will cause all the same problems it would in type 2 diabetes (including diabetic ketoacidosis and, if untreated, death), except that unlike in type 2 diabetes (where this can often be waited out if it’s not too severe), hyperglycemia won’t self-resolve without exogenous insulin.

It makes a lot of other health considerations more difficult to manage

For starters, it increases the risk of… honestly, most other adverse health conditions. This is for three main reasons:

• Being an autoimmune condition, it does mean the immune system is chronically compromised, which reduces its ability to do its actual job, i.e. defending the body from pathogens and similar
  • In this case, even the best general advice for most people, such as that discussed in How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation, will only get one so far
• Hypo- and hyperglycemia (low and high blood sugar levels, which are both frequently-suffered conditions within T1D) both have adverse effects on the body which increase the risk of many health problems
  • Even if there are still generally helpful habits, such as: 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
• Trying to manage the hypos and hypers makes it very difficult to do a lot of other things that most people take for granted when it comes to improving one’s health. It affects one’s ability to exercise (see our “learn more” below for how to best manage that, by the way), and has a huge impact on adherence to any sort of dietary strategy, let alone things like intermittent fasting. Simply put, one cannot be especially purist about diet when the options are “have a sugary snack at 4am to correct this hypo, or go into a coma”
  • This produces similar challenges to those discussed in our article Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue!

Want to learn more?

You might like this very good book that we reviewed:

Exercise with Type 1 Diabetes: How to exercise without scary lows or frustrating highs – by Ginger Vieira ← most of this book is very practical information, e.g: using fasted exercise (4 hours from last meal+bolus) to prevent hypos, counterintuitive as that may seem—the key is that timing a workout for when you have the least amount of fast-acting insulin in your body means your body can’t easily use your blood sugars for energy, and draws from your fat reserves instead… Win/Win!

That’s just one quick tip; do check out the book for much more 😎

Take care!