Patient Education
What is type 1 diabetes?
Type 1 diabetes is a condition where your blood glucose (sugar) level is too high because your body can’t make a hormone called insulin.
This happens because your body attacks the cells in your pancreas that make the insulin, meaning you can’t produce any at all.
We all need insulin to live. It does an essential job. It allows the glucose in our blood to enter our cells and fuel our bodies.
When you have type 1 diabetes, your body still breaks down the carbohydrates from food and drink and turns it into glucose. But when the glucose enters your bloodstream, there’s no insulin to allow it into your body’s cells. More and more glucose then builds up in your bloodstream, leading to high blood sugar levels.
Learn more.
For more information from the UK’s leading charity on diabetes, please visit diabetes.org.uk for more information.
What is type 2 diabetes?
Type 2 diabetes is a condition where the insulin your pancreas makes can’t work properly, or your pancreas can’t make enough insulin. This means your blood glucose (sugar) levels keep rising.
Again, we all need insulin to live. When you have type 2 diabetes, your body still breaks down carbohydrate from your food and drink and turns it into glucose. The pancreas then responds to this by releasing insulin. But because this insulin can’t work properly, your blood sugar levels keep rising. This means more insulin is released.
For some people with type 2 diabetes this can eventually tire the pancreas out, meaning their body makes less and less insulin. This can lead to even higher blood sugar levels and mean you are at risk of hyperglycaemia.
Diagnostic management.
Depending on the type of diabetes you have, you might already be using products like insulin pens and blood glucose (sugar) monitors. Maybe apps and smart technology to help you keep an eye on your weight and activity levels. But your options to manage your diabetes are growing as technology starts to develop.
At Neon Diagnostics, we want to make it as easy as possible to help you learn how to live with type 1 and type 2 diabetes which can be challenging, but we’ll help you to discover what works best and from a diagnostic point of view, Neon Diagnostics are to committed to help in any possible way we can.
Whether its support, further explanations of our product range or assisting with the best monitoring management techniques of your blood glucose sugar levels we will work together with your health care providers to help, progress and move forward positively together.