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Comment by GiorgioG | Hacker News Reader

One of the issues that causes confusion is there are two types of diabetes, type 2 which is developed because you don't generally take care of yourself (diet, exercise, etc.) and type 1, which is an autoimmune disease which does not 'develop' due to poor lifestyle choices.

Most people confuse the two. If only they'd chosen better names to differentiate them.

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One of the issues that causes confusion is there are two types of diabetes

I'm aware of a third type of diabetes that you almost never hear anything about: Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes (CFRD). My risk of developing it is the reason I read diabetes articles.

I have been told it is neither Type 1 nor Type 2.

My blood sugar levels are more stable than they used to be. My first-hand experience makes me skeptical of a lot of the sweeping assertions I get told we know with certainty.

Diabetes is actually more of a continuum than a pair of diseases. I was diagnosed with a Type 2 variant (low insulin output and high insulin resistance) when I was in my twenties, and I was very skinny at the time. I can't tell you how offensive it is when people (including many Type 1s) blithely blame Type 2 exclusively on lifestyle choices. That said, diet and exercise do work very well to control Type 2 diabetes.

I'd say diet is a failure on societal scale but at the same time individuals are the only ones who can fight against it. No one is going to help you because it is more profitable for corporations to ruin your health.

I have never heard of Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes (CFRD), but I have heard of Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA, sometimes called Type 1.5). It's an autoimmune type of diabetes (like type 1), but it doesn't start showing symptoms until adulthood (typically middle age or later, but I know of one case that manifested in early 20s). It is often mis-diagnosed as type 2, because of the later onset, but patients often become insulin dependent.

Thank you. This is new information for me.

There are actually a number of "diabetes" beyond Type 1 and Type 2. Some women become diabetic during pregnancy. There is also "water diabetes" which is more neurological, essentially your bladder, brain, and whatever tells your hydration level don't tall and you end up always drinking or needing to drink and not being able to tell when you need to urinate.

Not actually sure if the water diabetes effects humans. Its not too uncommon in dogs though.

Thanks.

I need to keep gestational diabetes more in mind. I already knew of it's existence. It just never crosses my mind.

But I bet there's interesting information out there on it.

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