My views on Types of Diabetes.

My view is that they're all serious. There's a myth out there, I think, that people say, oh, type 2 diabetes is not as serious as type 1. And I have a different perspective. I think they are all serious. So in brief, type 1 is caused by a total failure to produce insulin and type 2 is caused by a partial failure to produce insulin and it's often linked with obesity. My learning is that it's not just obvious obesity, it's not big heavy people necessarily, but it's how they carry excessive body fat so you could have an internal obesity if you like which not everybody thinks about and that was brought to my attention by Dr. Moseley and his recent TV programs and how he was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic and what he did about his diet in order to overcome that. So I thought was interesting. My view is also that type 2 can also lead to type 1 later in individuals' lives and the main problem I think is that type 2 is often diagnosed later than it could be or should be. It kind of lingers for a long period before people notice and from my brother's experience, you know, he was told that he was pre-diabetic a few years ago and right, I think wrongly, chose to do very little about it. So he's now on metformin but I, you know, I was trying to give him advice at the time about diet but it kind of went in one ear and out the other. He wasn't ready to do something for it, I felt. And I think the interesting, you know, The problem with type 2 is that it's not diagnosed early enough but there's also some good news there I think in that the evidence of it can be reduced by short-term no or no carbohydrate diets so I think that's quite a good development. Another type that I'm aware of is gestational diabetes where I guess the shock to the mother of being pregnant and the extra demands being made need physically and hormonally can trigger the need to require insulin. It can suppress the body's own ability to produce insulin. And from working at Guy's Hospital in an admin capacity, but also taking part in clinical trials then, I came across some pregnant type one diabetics and it sort of really dawned on me that it's very important for pregnant type 1 diabetes women to monitor their blood glucose very carefully and that you know it's important for their health but also their child's health. So good control is, we have a lot better access to it now than we did at the time of clinical trials but it's really key and I think that links into blood glucose control and the benefits of continuous glucose monitoring.