Type II Diabetes
Type II Diabetes is a metabolic disorder in which your body becomes insulin resistant regardless of the amount of insulin your pancreas is producing. At times the pancreas is even producing higher amounts of insulin than normal because it is receiving negative feedback from the rest of your body. This leads to deranged beta cell secretion. In later stages of Diabetes there is actually a 20%-50% loss of your beta cells because they have overexerted themselves. With malfunctioning insulin receptors to bring glucose into your cells the homeostasis in your body is out of balance, there is too much glucose in your bloodstream and not enough in your cells for them to carry out their functions properly. Glucose is needed for many things ATP (energy) production, the production of lipids and proteins, the making of other important substances like sucrose (glucose plus fructose), lactose (glucose plus galactose), starch, cellulose and glycogen. Also glucose is the precursor of Vitamin C, which is important for reducing oxidative stress of your red blood cells and regulating gastric acid. The symptoms that accompany type II diabetes are glucoseuria, polyuria, polydipsia, weight loss, blurred vision, atherosclerosis, neuropathy, fatigue and loss of endurance. The factors that have been attributed to the disease are genetic inheritance and obesity. Obesity contributes to diabetes by producing excess stress on beta cells because of the higher demand of the added weight. The cells eventually fail. 21 million Americans have this disease, of which 6.4million are undiagnosed.
Mechanisms of type II diabetes are described below with their resulting symptoms. The first mechanisms described occur because of reduced glucose uptake by the cells. The uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2) is produced by the beta cells along with insulin. Therefore, as increased insulin is being produced by the beta cells due to negative feedback, so is UPC2. UCP2 is a transmembrane...