So I was going to talk about blood glucose today, but it is another involved thing, so I decided to wait a day and talk about a T1D diagnosis and the autoimmune disease itself. So it is a common myth that T1D only affects children. The fact that the largest fundraising organization for T1D is named the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation doesn’t help at all…. When it is true that a majority of people are children, young children, when they are diagnosed it is not true for everyone. ALSO, those children grow up, yes indeed they become adults, and then you have more adults with T1D… crazy right?!?! This is something that most organizations that support research for T1D still have yet to grasp. Yes, believe me, I know how ridiculous this sounds. So this is how the diagnosis happens… you can have the autoimmune gene, or genes, (they have now identified over 50 different ones that can trigger T1D), and they lie dormant…. until something such as a serious illness, tons and tons of stress (internal or external), or an environmental trigger (lots of chemicals) trigger that gene to express itself, and then the autoimmune kicks in. See, it takes some of your awesome T cells and makes them rogue and then they decide to attack your pancreas and kill all of your islet cells, again the cells that produce insulin. This process can take days, weeks, months, or even can take more than a year depending on which straw of life you drew. Really there is no rhyme or reason for the speed of the progression of the disease. So it is common for children to develop the disease simply because their bodies are going through so much constant change through growth, hormones, being exposed to soooo many new germs simply because they are new little people. Other common times someone can be diagnosed are their young 20s, 40s. 60s, or really whenever it happens to you. T1D does NOT age discriminate, or really discriminate at all for that matter. Usually diagnosis happens when a T1D patient is hospitalized for dehydration, flu like symptoms, (DKA), excessive weight loss, or a coma due to DKA. The point is they are really, really sick. I was diagnosed right after my 21 birthday… awesome birthday present right?! I was lucky in a way, I had a physical for a life insurance policy and was turned down because I was a “diabetic” and hadn’t told them, because I had no idea. Sure I had the symptoms but I also had recently sprained my ankle very, very badly and thought I was so tired and achy because I had been on crutches for 2 months. So I quickly was told to go to the Dr., my blood sugar was 513, normal BG is 80-120, and was shown how to check my blood sugar and give myself a shot… boom within 12 hours completely different life. So what would have happened if I hadn’t had that physical? I would have ended up in the hospital within a week. That test literally saved my life. My A1C, which is your average blood glucose over 3 months was 12%, a healthy persons is between 4-6%. Yup, it was a doozy and I was pretty sick for a while. So T1D doesn’t look a certain way, it can affect anyone at any age. Tomorrow I will go into the every fluctuating world of blood sugars/glucose otherwise known as BG. Be ready because it is a rollercoaster of a ride!