Diabetes Type 1 is known as insulin-dependent diabetes, because the body can not produce insulin by its own means, so this missing hormone should be replaced.
The cause for which the body does not produce insulin is the result of the combination of three factors:
- Factor or genetic alteration.
- Environmental factor.
- The presence of substances that destroy the cells that produce insulin.
When speaking of a genetic factor, it doesn’t mean that the individual necessarily inherit diabetes. In reality, what he acquires genetically is the susceptibility to the disease. These people get more probabilities because they are born with this alteration. But for diabetes to become apparent the conditions mentioned before need to exist.
Environmental factors are defined as those who act as triggers and can be as follows:
- Viral disease: hepatitis, measles, mononucleosis, etc..
- A strong emotion: the loss of a loved one, a traumatic accident, and so on.
- Time of the year.
- Medicines.
We say that these factors are triggers of the affection because when they join to the genetic defect they cause an injury in the beta cells that leads to inflammation. Our body immediately detects it and sends the defenses necessary to repair it. These defenses are called antibodies.
Antibodies are responsible for defending ourselves from foreign agents (viruses, bacteria, etc.) entering our body. But in this case, what happens is that they attack our own cells. Why? Because they are not recognized as an integral part of our body due to a genetic alteration they present. That’s why it is said that diabetes is autoimmune, as our own defenses end up triggering the disorder.
And here we have a third factor, which are substances that attack the very cells that produce insulin and destroy them. In this case, the antibodies are called auto-antibodies.
Therefore, due to the action of the auto-antibodies, there is a level of destruction of the beta cells islet.
When our body does not recognize the cells as their own, these autoimmune elements appear and destroy them, as explained above.
The lesion in the beta cells decreases the presence of insulin in the body and therefore decreases their production. That’s when diabetes appears.