This is a really big misconception, and one that takes me off guard everytime I am confronted with it. I am shocked at first when people ask me, “Did your son drink a lot of juice as a baby?” As to imply that the reason he has Type 1 Diabetes in the first place is because I drowned him in juice when he was an infant.
Then I am saddened that yet again this question is being asked of me. It makes me sad because moms should know that giving your child juice as part of a healthy meal plan would never, ever give your little one Type 1 Diabetes. It should just be something that comes with becoming a mom.
Then I get angry. I get angry because I realize the what the question really is, “Did you give your child Type 1 because you gave him juice?” As if I would chose to give my child a disease that would require him to have to take shots of insulin with every meal, prick his finger a minimum of 10 times a day, remain unsure of his future health, fall into a coma, have repeated seizures all because I wanted to give him juice in a sippy cup.
And so here we are, www.type1demystified.com, a place where I can hash all this out, so that Type 1 Diabetes can be understood by more than the people whose lives it so deeply and profoundly affects.
As explained on the American Diabetes Association website, what happens to the body of a person just diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes is as follows:
Inside the pancreas, beta cells make the hormone insulin. With each meal, beta cells release insulin to help the body use or store the blood glucose it gets from food. In people with type 1 diabetes, the pancreas no longer makes insulin. The beta cells have been destroyed and they need insulin shots to use glucose from meals.
When my son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, it meant that his pancreas no longer makes insulin. His body had begun to attack the cells inside the pancreas that make insulin so that they no longer make the insulin. This does not happen because he ate sugar, or junk food, or soda. It is an autoimmune process that occurs from within the body. There is no outside source (food or lack of exercise) that can cause Type 1 Diabetes.
This is not the case for people with Type 2 diabetes. The following paragraphs from both the ADA website and WebMd website respectively, continue on to explain the difference between the two types of diabetes and the difference in their origination.
People with type 2 diabetes make insulin, but their bodies don’t respond well to it. Some people with type 2 diabetes need diabetes pills or insulin shots to help their bodies use glucose for energy.
Diabetes is a number of diseases that involve problems with the hormone insulin. While not everyone with type 2 diabetes is overweight, obesity and lack of physical activity are two of the most common causes of this form of diabetes. It is also responsible for nearly 95% of diabetes cases in the United States, according to the CDC.
People that get Type 1 Diabetes can in no way avoid getting this disease. Like my son, there was nothing I could do to prevent or even prepare myself from smacking into the brick wall of a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes. Believe me, if there were anyway I could have avoided this disease being bestowed upon my son, I certainly would have.
That is just not the case for people with Type 2 Diabetes. There are ways to avoid Type 2 Diabetes. Type 1 Diabetes is UNAVOIDABLE for the people that do eventually get diagnosed.