Hi there. Welcome back to our course on the most common chronic conditions of childhood. My name is Dr. Lauren Welch and I will be your instructor. Today, we will be talking about a condition called Type 1 Diabetes mellitus. Have you ever heard the term an apple a day keeps the doctor away? Well, that is not always true, especially if you happen to suffer from poorly controlled diabetes mellitus. You see, when you take a bite into a delicious apple, the cells within your body use the sugar from that apple to make energy. It's important that our body has sugar for our brain and other vital organs to function properly. That energy is what helps you stay awake and focus while you listen to me talk to you today. Hello. Are you awake? Okay, good. Even though sugar is critical to our survival, will soon learn that too much or too little sugar in our body can be very dangerous. One of the greatest examples of this, is in diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus is a condition that occurs when the body is unable to properly process sugar within the bloodstream. There are two types of diabetes mellitus; Type 1 and Type 2. Previously, type 1 was called juvenile diabetes, and type 2 is known as adult onset diabetes. However, physicians no longer use those terms to describe the two conditions. Because we know that both diseases can be diagnosed at any age. Type 1 diabetes is not as common as type 2 diabetes. In fact, only five percent of people diagnosed with diabetes mellitus, will have the type 1 form. We will not discuss type 2 diabetes today, but you can learn more about it by going to the supplementary materials provided at the end of this lesson. To understand type 1 diabetes, we must first learn about how the body normally handles the sugar we eat. When we eat a delicious snack, such as an apple, the sugar from the snack is processed in our body as a substance called glucose. Glucose is important because it helps fuel our body and provide our cells, tissues, and organs with the energy they need to help us go about our daily activities. Do you love to run, workout, or ride a bike? If it weren't for glucose, you wouldn't be able to perform any of those activities. After we consume glucose, it enters into our bloodstream. From there, it's important that the glucose is able to move into the cells within our body, so that it can provide the fuel that we need. However, the doors to the cells and organs in our body are locked, and require a key to open them. That's where our pancreas comes in. The pancreas is an organ in our body that helps our body to process glucose by releasing a hormone known as insulin into the blood. I think of insulin as the key that unlocks the doors to ourselves, and allows glucose to pass into the cells from our bloodstream. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition. What is autoimmune mean? Remember, when we learned about the normal functions of the immune system. You'll probably recall that the immune system is our bodies army, and protects us from harmful things in our environment. Well, in an autoimmune condition, the body receives an incorrect signal, that tells it to turn against itself and attack healthy cells, tissues, and organs throughout its own body. In type 1 diabetes, the immune system receives a signal that tells it to attack the pancreas. The pancreas is where we previously learned that insulin is produced and released into the bloodstream. Without insulin production in the pancreas, there are no longer any keys available to open the cells, and allow glucose to enter and provide energy to the body. So, what happens next? Glucose stays in the bloodstream and build up, which leads to many complications that we will discuss in a later segment. Because glucose is unable to enter cells, the cells are starved of the energy they need to provide energy for our body. Now, let's go back to the apple we talked about at the very beginning. Imagine that after eating an apple, you're body is unable to use it sugar to produce energy. You probably won't feel so great. In fact, you'll probably feel pretty rundown and have trouble focusing on this lesson. That is because when cells are starved of the energy they need, they're desperate to get energy from somewhere else. So, what do they do? They use alternative ways of getting the energy. An alternative way of making energy requires that cells also create a substance called acid. Acid is not good for the cells, tissues, and organs in our body. The result of acid buildup in the body, is something called diabetic ketoacidosis. You will commonly hear diabetic ketoacidosis referred to as DKA, which is just the name shorten to make it easier to pronounce. DKA is a medical emergency, we'll talk more about this later. Whoo! okay. That was a lot of information about type 1 diabetes mellitus. Let's review, Doctors and scientists do not have a great idea of what causes type 1 diabetes. We know that it is an autoimmune condition, meaning that the body's immune system abnormally fights against itself. But we don't quite know why that is. What we do know, is that type 1 diabetes does tend to run in families. Although, only 10 percent of the time are we able to identify a relative with type 1 diabetes when a child is diagnosed. Currently, there's not a cure for type 1 diabetes. However, we know that good management of the disease can prevent illness and bad outcomes. Now, that we have an understanding of what it means to have type 1 diabetes, we will move on to the next video and discuss routine management of this condition.
