health

People with type 1 diabetes are likely to feel sick fairly suddenly. The
most common symptoms are increased thirst, weight loss in spite of
increased appetite, nausea and vomiting, and blurred vision. If the person
is not diagnosed and treated with insulin quickly, they can fall into a
coma and die.
People with type 2 diabetes may not have any noticeable symptoms
for some years. When they do develop symptoms, they may feel thirsty
and hungry, urinate more frequently, tire easily, have vision problems,
or notice that wounds and sores heal slowly. Women with gestational
diabetes may not have any symptoms at all.
Diabetes is a serious disease because it often leads to complications
that seem far removed from digestive issues. People with diabetes are
at increased risk of blood vessel injury, stroke, blindness, heart disease,
kidney failure, gangrene leading to limb amputations, and nerve damage.
Women with gestational diabetes are more likely to have babies with birth
defects.

Dr. Banting’s Breakthrough

Prior to the early 1920s, type 1 diabetes was
not only incurable but fatal within a relatively
short period of time. Although doctors were
aware that the disease was caused by the lack
of insulin secreted by the pancreas, early
attempts to treat diabetics by feeding them
fresh pancreas had failed. Frederick Banting
(1891–1941), a Canadian doctor, worked
together with a medical student named Charles
Best at the University of Toronto to see
whether they could successfully extract insulin
from the pancreas and use it to treat diabetics.
The two men first tested the extracted insulin
on diabetic dogs. Their first human patient was
a man named Leonard Thompson, who was
close to death from diabetes. The success of
Thompson’s treatment led to Banting’s winning
the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in
1923.