Diabetes is the body's inability to process sugars and starches properly. Your body digests a meal and converts all the carbohydrates into glucose commonly referred to as blood sugar. The pancreas detects this sudden infusion of glucose and in response, produces the hormone insulin. The insulin is needed to allow your body's various organs-brain, muscles, liver, and so on -- to extract the glucose from your bloodstream to either use it at once or store it for future use. The body's need for sugar is constant-without it in sufficient quantities you will become dizzy, faint, go into a coma. Each cell in your body has a lock on it, and the insulin is the only key that fits, to open the lock to let in the sugars and without insulin the sugar cannot enter the cells and will remain circulating uselessly in your bloodstream, where they do you no good and cause considerable harm.

There are two types of diabetes, and these differ in importance.

Type 1 Juvenile diabetes which usually strikes during childhood or adolescence. It is caused by some damage that is been done to the pancreas-possibly by a virus. As a result, the organ produces too little insulin to do the job of getting sugars from the blood stream into the proper tissues. It is an incurable disease and can be treated only be replacing the insulin with daily insulin injections. That is why eating carefully and measuring blood sugar level is required.

Type 2 diabetes is also called adult-onset diabetes, because that is when it usually shows up. Unlike Type 1 diabetes, there is no virus to blame, just who we are (genetics) and what we eat. A surprisingly large percentage of us are genetically predisposed to diabetes of this kind. But the predisposition is just that-the potential for diabetes-until poor diet do the damage. We can't control our genes. But if you can keep from making bad food choices, you can prevent this form of diabetes. Diabetes along with

• High cholesterol
• High ratio of bad cholesterol to good
• High blood pressure
• Central obesity - Apple shape
• High triglycerides
• VLDL (bad cholesterol) particles

Are also the conditions that are closely associated with heart attack and stroke. Genetics plays a major role in determining whether you will be susceptible to these conditions. Your life style is in your hands. Follow a healthy lifestyle and avoid these conditions.