Diabetes & CV

What is Cardiovascular Disease?

Cardiovascular disease affects the heart, blood vessels, veins and arteries in the body. Most types of cardiovascular disease are caused by blockage of arteries that carry blood to important organs. Cardiovascular diseases include heart attack and stroke, which are the most common types, as well as heart rhythm abnormalities, heart valve disease, and peripheral vascular disease (blockage of arteries to the legs and arms)..

What is Diabetes?

Worldwide, 346 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes (World Health Organization, 2012).The most common kind is Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes means the body does not produce enough insulin or does not respond to insulin as well as it should. Insulin is a hormone used to convert food into energy. When the body produces insulin, the insulin carries the sugar from your blood into your cells where it is converted into energy. Without producing enough insulin, or using the insulin which has been produced, an excess amount of sugar can build up in your blood instead of being carried to your cells. The build-up of sugar in your blood may lead to diabetes. Over the long-term, diabetes can lead to damage of the blood vessels and organs like the heart, kidney and eyes.

Prediabetes is an excess level of sugar in your blood; however, the level may not be high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. Before a person develops Type 2 diabetes, “prediabetes” is almost always present (American Diabetes Association, 2012). Impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) are forms of prediabetes.

Dysglcyemia is a disorder which affects your body’s ability to regulate the sugar in your blood. Dysglycemia often leads to the development of diabetes or prediabetes.