What Causes Type 2 Diabetes?
Type 2 diabetes generates from various combinations of lifestyle and genetic factors. Being obese or overweight raises your risk as well. Carrying heavyweight, particularly your belly, forms your cells more resistance to the insulin effects on your blood sugar. Such conditions run in the families. Family members share the same genes that form them more likely to attain type 2 diabetes and to become obese or overweight. Insulin is an organically occurring hormone. The pancreas forms it and secretes it when you consume it. Insulin aids in transporting glucose from the blood to cells in your body where it is used for energy.
If you are having type 2 diabetes, then your body gets resistant to insulin. The body is then no longer utilizing hormones effectively. This forces your pancreas to perform harder to form insulin more. By the time, this might harm cells in your pancreas. Your pancreas might not be capable of forming any insulin eventually. If you do not form sufficient insulin or if the body does not utilize it effectively, sugar forms up in the bloodstream. This leaves the cells of the body starving for energy. The Doctor does not know what triggers the series of events exactly. It might have to do with the dysfunction of cells in the pancreas or with cell regulation and signaling.
While the choices of lifestyle are normally triggering with diabetes type 2, you might be more likely to diagnosing with it if:
- You are almost 45 years old
- There is a genetic predisposition to having diabetes type in your family
- If you are Hispanic/Latino, Black, Alaska Native descent or Native American
- There is a genetic predisposition of forming obesity in your family members that might raise the risk of diabetes and insulin resistance
While the exact triggering of diabetes type 2 in your resistance of the body to insulin, there is slowly a combination of reasons that raise the chance of that resistance happening. Diabetes type 2 might be the reason by a number of factors:
- Not being physically active
- Being obese or overweight
- Family history
- Genetics
Diabetes type 2 mostly begins with insulin resistance. This is a situation in which the cells do not respond to insulin normally. As a result, your body requires more insulin to aid the glucose let into your cells. At first, your body forms more insulin to try to attain cells to respond. But by the time, your body cannot form sufficient insulin and the blood sugar level increases. Diabetes type 2 is the most occurring form of diabetes type 2 is led by various factors consisting genes and lifestyle factors.
- Physical inactivity, overweight and obesity
You are more likely to form diabetes type 2 if you are not active physically and are obese or overweight. Extra weight sometimes leads to insulin resistance and is most commonly in individuals having diabetes type 2. The body fat location also forms a difference. Extra belly fat links to diabetes type 2, insulin resistance and blood vessels disease and heart diseases. To check if your weight puts you at an increasing risk of diabetes type 2, check some Body Mass Index (BMI) charts.
- Family history and genes
As in diabetes type 2, certain genes might make you more likely to form diabetes type 2. The disease needs to run in the family and happens more frequently in these ethnic or racial groups, such as:
- American Indians
- Pacific islanders
- Alaska natives
- Latinos/Hispanics
- African Americans
- Native Hawaiians
Genes can also raise the risk of diabetes type 2 by raising an individual’s tendency to becoming obese or overweight.
- Insulin resistance
Diabetes type 2 mostly starts with insulin resistance, a situation in which liver, muscle and fat cells do not utilize insulin well. As a result, the body requires more insulin to aid glucose let into the cells. At first, the pancreas forms more insulin to form up with the adding demand. By that time, the pancreas cannot form sufficient blood sugar levels and insulin increases.
- Genetic mutations
- Cystic fibrosis: Forms thick mucus that leads to the scarring in the pancreas. This scarring might cure the pancreas from forming sufficient insulin.
- Monogenic diabetes: It is led by changes, mutations or in a single gene. Such changes are mostly passed by families but few of the time the gene mutation occurs by its own. Most of such gene mutations lead to diabetes by forming the pancreas less capable of forming insulin. The most occurring kinds of monogenic diabetes are maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY) and neonatal diabetes of the young. Neonatal diabetes happens in the first 6 months of your life. Doctors normally diagnose MODY while in early adulthood or adolescence but sometimes such disease is not diagnosed till later in your life.
- Hemochromatosis: It causes the body to store a lot of iron. If the disease does not curable, iron might form up in and damages the other organs and pancreas
- Hormonal diseases
Few hormonal diseases might lead to the body to form a lot of hormones that sometimes lead to diabetes and insulin resistance.
- Acromegaly happens when the body forms a lot of growth hormone
- Cushing’s syndrome happens when the body forms a lot of cortisol that sometimes known as the stress hormone
- Hyperthyroidism happens when the thyroid gland forms a lot of thyroid hormone
- Removal or damage of the pancreas
Pancreatic cancer, pancreatitis and trauma might harm the beta cells or make them less capable to form insulin that leads to diabetes type 2. If the pancreas gets damaged and is removed, diabetes type 2 will happen because of the loss of beta cells. Diabetes type 2 is increasing in epidemic conditions of almost 9% of the population over the world now. While, according to WHO (World Health Organization), older adults are having type 2 diabetes. If you are having diabetes or care for loved ones who are having diabetes type 2, then you already know that it is a metabolic disease. (13)