There are about 38 million people in the U.S. that have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Of those approximately 143,900 live in Nebraska and at least one, me, lives here in Gothenburg. Type 2 is somewhat different from Type 1, or juvenile diabetes as it doesn’t show up until mid-life, generally after age 45. I was 63 when I was first diagnosed. There is a genetic component to type 2 diabetes and that is true in my family as both of my sisters are diabetic. My mom who lived to be 94 wasn’t, so the gene probably came from my father’s side of the family. He died young so we will never know if he would have come down with the condition. There is also a lifestyle component to the condition and I’m not very good about that.

Each year at my AMV Dr. Aaron tells me that I need to exercise more and lose weight.

The term “diabetes” means to pass through because you tend to go to the bathroom a lot. It was first recognized as early as 1,500 years B.C. It was noted that the taste of the urine from people with the condition was sweet, hence in India it was known as “honey urine”. There are multiple conditions that are called “diabetes”, but the official name for “sugar diabetes”, the type that I have, is diabetes mellitus, or to “pass through sweet urine”.

Until 1922, there was no treatment for diabetes, either type 1 or type 2, except a strict diet. A diet more strict than today’s keto diet, which Mary Lou Block tells me, would “cure” my diabetes. She may be right, but I don’t diet well! Even with the strict no carbohydrate diets, patients rarely lived more than a year or two after being diagnosed. Now there are a number of drugs for treating the condition including insulin and thus diabetes is no longer the death sentence it once was.

Insulin is made in the pancreas by special “island” cells (hence the name insulin which is derived from Latin for island). It was first discovered when the pancreas of dogs were removed in an attempt to understand the function of the organ. Generally, the dogs died within a week after surgery. It was noted that flies were attracted to the urine of the dogs with no pancreas and so the urine was tasted. It was sweet so the deduction was that diabetes was linked to the pancreas.

In 1921, a couple of young doctors removed the pancreas from a healthy dog and were able to extract a “thick brown muck” from the organ. They then, on a daily basis, injected some of that “muck” into a dog with no pancreas. The dog lived for 70 days until they ran out of the “muck”. The next year a 14-year-old boy by the name of Leonard Thompson was the first person to receive insulin refined from a dog. He lived 13 more years taking the drug. The medical firm of Eli Lilly then began the large-scale production of insulin from cattle and pigs, producing enough to treat the entire U.S.

Today, the bacteria E. coli has been bioengineered such that it produces “human” insulin thus reducing the reactions that were possible with insulin produced by other animals. So where am I in my diabetes treatments? I’m taking my meds, including a daily dose of insulin, and I have a sensor stuck to the back of my arm with a Bluetooth connection to my phone keeping me informed about my blood sugar. My sugar numbers are not bad, but if I would only listen to Dr.

Aaron and Mary Lou; exercise, diet, and lose weight, my blood sugar numbers would be even better!!