Diabetes types 1 and 2: it's time we learnt the difference
25th January 2016
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As a child, we are frequently told that eating sugary foods will rot our teeth. When we transition to adulthood, the newspapers we read warn us that the same sugary foods will cause diabetes.
Although many of us were guilty of paying too many trips to the dentist as a result of our attachment to the corner shop’s penny sweet collection, more of us are guilty of taking what we read in newspapers at face value.
The condition “diabetes” is perhaps the most misreported illness that we know of. Much of the rhetoric plastered across major publications informs us that certain eating habits and lifestyle choices can cause diabetes. What newspapers fail to address is that diabetes is not a generic term for one illness, it comes in the form of type 1 and type 2.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, meaning that it is caused by the immune system attacking beta cells which produce insulin in the pancreas. There is currently no known cause for type 1 diabetes.

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