What is type 1 diabetes?
It is “diabetes mellitus type 1″, resulting from the body’s failure to produce insulin. We’ll just call it T1D in this article.
In one of our local schools, there are no fewer than ten children with T1D. Two in the same family! Astonishingly, that is one in fifty students!
Many of them have insulin pumps that register how many portions of food they can eat. And determined by their reading, each brings out, on a daily basis, some junk food to eat – perhaps a packet of chips, a fruit strap, a muesli bar, or some rice crackers. Each has a portion count on it, clearly labeled by a caring, well-intentioned parent.
Another friend’s grandson is also has the disease. According to her, he comes home from school and may eat a whole packet of sweet biscuits, or make a cake from a packet mixture and devour all of it before dinner. His insulin injections, I am told, take care of the highly-processed, high-GI food!
There is much work to be done in educating people to stop eating junk, and so reduce the incidence of this appalling disease.
However, there is some other work being done that offers some hope, and it is instructive to be aware of it.
T1D has always been considered to be a life-long disease, caused by the immune system destroying beta cells in the pancreas and thus not allowing the body to produce insulin.
Scientists have generally been united in their belief that there was no cure for this disease.
As the number of children diagnosed with T1D worryingly grows, it is somewhat encouraging to read about a relatively new study conducted by scientists at the University of Toronto, in Canada.
Thanks to the Internet, this has found its way to almost all parts of the globe with amazing ease!
Enter – hot peppers!
It would seem that diabetic mice that were injected with capsaicin (the hotness chemical found in hot peppers) became healthy, and were cured no less than twenty-four hours later!
The scientists injected a substance that served to counteract the effect of faulty pain neurons in the pancreas.
Traditionally experts have held the belief that T1D was caused by the failure of the immune system to protect, but Doctor H. M. Dosch and his colleague Doctor M. Salter, at the forefront of the experiment, now believe that the cause may well be the blame of malfunctioning pancreatic nerve neurons.
People suffer from T1D when their pancreas stops delivering enough insulin. This causes the inflammation and death of the islet cells found in the pancreas and makes it difficult for the body to process food.
Excessive pain nerves in your islet cells
Doctor Dosch had noted in his research that things called “islet cells” in diabetics, were enclosed by a huge number of “pain nerves” that sent signals to the brain that there was damage.
In order to put his theory to test, he injected into his T1D mice, the capsaicin, only to find out that the islet cells were immediately coursed into action, and stress on the pancreas was eliminated.
You can imagine the joy of this discovery!
Dr. Dosch and his team were naturally cautiously excited by their findings, findings that fly in the face of conventional beliefs about this disease being caused by the body’s immune system turning on itself.
Another conclusion that the team made was that there are more similarities between type 1 and type 2 diabetes and other chronic inflammatory conditions, than were previously considered.
Early days, but think about what we ingest
Of course this is still in early day research. However, the signs appear to be much more positive for sufferers.
Outside of such research, there is still much to be said for being critical of what we eat, and what we feed our children. Maintaining an alkaline body prevents such conditions, and other diseases, from forming. Take time to educate yourself about the benefits from having a properly alkaline/acid balanced body.
By Maria Renouf
