By Danny Khneiser
By Danny Khneiser
Alex Rimbach, a Riverside City College student, always left class without any explanation leaving other students thinking, “I wish I could be privileged enough to be able to just leave class whenever I wanted.”
Soon students discovered that the situation didn’t favor him one bit. Come to find, Rimbach has been diagnosed with type one diabetes.
Each time he left class he had to prick his finger to test his blood sugar level.
People with diabetes are unable to handle sugar so it causes thirst, frequent urination, tiredness and many other symptoms.
One time at the age of 19, Rimbach went into a coma.
“I woke up three day’s later like, ‘What the heck happened?'” Rimbach said. “Living with diabetes is a constant battle, 24 hours a day, giving yourself 10 shots a day to constantly check your blood sugar and balancing out your glucose level, making sure your blood level doesn’t end up too low resulting in a seizure.”
According to http://www.diabetes.org, an estimated 23.6 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with diabetes. This makes up close to eight percent of the population.
As a result, the disease is the cause 224,092 annual deaths. With numbers as staggering as this the importance of continued research in order to curve the affects of the disease is all the more relevant.
November is Diabetes Awareness Month. It’s celebrated worldwide to help promote knowledge and awareness of diabetes.
In November, the International Diabetes Federation has the Blue Monument Challenge. Monuments all over the world will be lit up blue day and night in recognition of World Diabetes Day.
Each year, close to 1.6 million people 20 years of age or older are diagnosed with diabetes, and another 5.2 million Americans do not know they have diabetes.
Diabetes has become a manageable condition with developments of medicine and science.
According to http://www. diabetes.org, type one diabetes is sometimes called insulin dependent diabetes. The pancreas either produces very little insulin or none at all.
People with this form of diabetes must inject or pump insulin two or three times everyday to make up for what the body is unable to produce.
About five to 10 percent of Americans with diabetes are diagnosed with type one diabetes.
Type two diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, with 90 to 95 percent of people diagnosed with the disease falling into this category.
In type two diabetes, the pancreas still produces insulin, but it does not produce enough or a person’s body has trouble using it.
Type two diabetes usually develops in adults over 35 years old, especially in those who are overweight.
The latter form of diabetes has begun to appear more in children and teenagers because of unhealthy diets and the lack of exercise.
There are a couple of simple things a person can do to help keep from developing diabetes.
First, eating right and cutting back on foods and drinks with large amounts of glucose, such as soda and candy, can help reduce a person’s risk of developing type two diabetes.
Each can of soda can carry anywhere between ten to 13 teaspoons of sugar.
Secondly, exercise can help prevent the onset of type two diabetes.
Even simple activities, whether it’s a walk around the block or any type of physical activities can help prevent diabetes.
For more information on diabetes or to make a donation, visit the American Diabetes Association Web site at http://www.diabetes.org.