Causes of Diabetes

Research is taking advancement day by day . Despite this no one actually knows what specifically causes diabetes. This has led to a number of rumours circulating some which are partially true and others which hold no truth at all. In this article I will be discussing what is known about the causes of diabetes.

1. Casual Causes: Diabetes develops as a result of your body's cells not getting enough insulin (a hormone which helps convert blood sugar/glucose into energy). This is usually because your pancreas fails to generate enough insulin or because your body's cells start to resist insulin. Although we know what leads to the development of diabetes we do not currently know why this happens in certain individuals and not others.Differ from person to person.

2. Gestational Diabetes (GDM): Once Again we do not know the exact causes of GDM although it is strongly linked with hormonal changes that occur during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. During this time the placenta releases hormones which block the normal action of insulin to ensure that the growing baby gets enough glucose. This causes pregnant women's insulin needs to increase by two or three times the normal rate. Failure to meet this need leads to the onset of GDM. Approximately 5% of pregnant women develop GDM and although we have a good idea of what causes it, we do not know why it affects certain women and not others. There are a number of associated risk factors but currently no definitive reason at all.

3. Type one Diabetes: We know that type 1 diabetes is caused by damage to the pancreas as the result of an auto-immune attack where the body's immune system starts to attack the insulin producing beta cells of the pancreas. Once more, whilst we know what causes type 1 diabetes we are still unsure what triggers this response. A number of suggestions have been put forward (including viral infections and faulty nerves) but currently none of these suggestions can be applied universally and globally.

4. Type 2 Diabetes and PRE-Diabetes:- It(PRE-diabetes) is an early form of type 2 diabetes and the causes of each are very similar. Type 2 diabetes develops when the body stops responding to insulin. The pancreas reacts by producing additional insulin and the liver responds by releasing extra glucose. Over time this limits the effectiveness of the pancreas and further increases insulin resistance in the body. As with the other types of diabetes we do not know what causes the above reaction. However, there is very strong evidence that type 2 diabetes is linked to age, ethnicity, family history, inactivity and obesity. It's the early form then type 1 also.

5) RUMOURS:- Since the exact cause of diabetes is unknown, there are a number of false suggestions floating around. These include diabetes being contagious (there is a hereditary element but it cannot be passed directly from person to person), diabetes being caused by sugar (excessive sugar consumption does not cause diabetes but is linked with obesity, a diabetes risk factor) and stress causing diabetes.

Presently! we have a general understanding of what happens inside our bodies to cause diabetes. However, the trigger behind these causes is still a mystery. Perhaps the strongest link is that between inactivity, obesity and type 2 diabetes but even this does not fully explain why some obese individuals never develop the disease. As research into the causes of diabetes continues, the best advice is to try and keep your blood sugar levels within a normal range. Keeping your weight under control, exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet can all play their part in this process. And also late sleeping can be one of the cause.

Each intention has been made to make this article accurate and informative but it is intended for general information only. Diabetes is a medical condition and this article is not intended as a substitute for the advice of your doctor or a qualified medical practitioner. If you have any concerns regarding any form of diabetes you should seek the advice of your doctor immediately. As nothing is precious then a human life, so don't be careless about your health, as health is wealth.

Classification of Viruses

Classification of Viruses are currently based on five phenotypic characteristics; morphology, or structure, of the virus; type of nucleic acid, or the genetic material, of the virus; mode of replication; hosts; and the type of disease they cause. There are two classification systems in use today, the Baltimore system and the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses classification guidelines.

Updated advance the baltimore classification system was developed by Nobel Prize winning biologist, David Baltimore. This system separates viruses into seven groups, designated by Roman numerals, depending on their type of genetic material, the number of strands of genetic material and their method of replication. There are other classification systems that are based on the morphology of the virus or the disease caused. These systems are inadequate due to the fact that some diseases are caused by different viruses, the cold or flu are the most common example of this and some viruses look very similar to one another. Another factor is viral structures are difficult to determine under a microscope thanks to their small size. By classifying viruses based on their genetic material, some indication of how to proceed with research is provided because viruses in a category behave in a similar manner.

See the seven groups are: Group I, double stranded DNA viruses such as the herpes virus and the chickenpox virus; Group II, single stranded DNA viruses such as the parvo virus; Group III, double stranded RNA viruses; Group IV, positive-sense single stranded RNA viruses such as the Sars virus, the yellow fever virus and many other well known viruses; Group V, negative-sense single stranded RNA viruses such as the measles virus, the mumps virus and the rabies virus; Group VI, reverse transcribing RNA viruses such as HIV; and Group VII, reverse transcribing DNA viruses such as the hepatitis B virus. The Group VI viruses use the enzyme to reverse-transcribe their RNA into DNA and then insert the transcribed DNA into the host organism's DNA, where it is replicated whenever a cell divides. The Group VII viruses transcribe their DNA into an RNA form, then transcribe the RNA back into DNA to be inserted into the host's DNA and replicated.It's all because of modern technology.

When we look at past,in the early 1990s, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses devised and implemented rules for the naming and classification of viruses. This group still oversees the classification of viruses today. The ICTV system shares many features with the system used for classifying cellular organisms. There are several differences however; the classification of cellular organisms starts with the Kingdom, while viruses start with Order; another difference is the species name generally takes the form Disease species. For example the classification of the yellow fever virus is; Family - Flaviviridae, Genus - Flavivirus, Species - Yellow Fever virus. Notice this virus does not have an Order classification; that is because recognition of the Orders has been extremely slow, in over ten years only three Orders have been named. Many of the 80 known families remain unplaced. The ICTV are still working on this aspect of virus classification. Research is endless , it's going-on for tiny partials till now.