Contents Introduction Overview of Diabetes Type I What is diabetes type I Health implications of diabetes type I Physical Activity What is physical activity? Why do we need physical activity in our lives? Physical Activity and Diabetes (Epidemiology) Conclusion Bibliography Introduction For our seminar topic "physical activity and disease" we chose diabetes as the focus of our research. Since diabetes is such a complex disease with many different forms, we decided to focus on diabetes type I. This is known as insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). This type of diabetes includes people who are dependant on injections of insulin on a daily basis in order to satisfy the bodies insulin needs, they cannot survive without these injections. OVERVIEW OF DIABETES TYPE I What is diabetes type I? In order to understand the disease we firstly need to know about insulin. Insulin is a hormone. The role of insulin is to convert the food we eat into various useful substances, discarding everything that is wasteful. It is the job of insulin to see that the useful substances are put to best use for our well-being. The useful substances are used for building cells, are made ready for immediate expenditure as energy and also stored for later energy expenditure. The cause of diabetes is an absolute or lack of the hormone insulin. As a result of this lack of insulin the processes that involve converting the foods we eat into various useful substances does not occur. Insulin comes from the beta cells which are located in the pancreas. In the case of diabetes type I almost all of the beta cells have been destroyed. Therefore daily injections of insulin become essential to life. Health implications of diabetes type I One of the products that is of vital importance in our bodies is glucose, a simple carbohydrate sugar which is needed by virtually every part of our body as fuel to function. Insulin controls the amount of glucose distributed to vital organs...
