How do u get type 1?

'nuff said ... now deal

 

I tell my daughter that her body made a mistake.

Instead of fighting with an invader a "bug" that was not welcome and could make her sick, her body made a mistake. It thought that her insulin producing cells where the bug and did their job and got rid of them.

So now she does not make insulin and that is why she is T1.

My second dd is part of the Trial Net studies, she has all of the 4 auto-antibodies that are identified to be associated with T1. Her last OGTT she had elevated numbers, and HAHA she had a UTI following that test.

It is a chicken or egg situation.

 

Symptoms show when the beta cells of the pancreas are 90% destroyed and that likely can not happen in a matter of days. Most kids with T1 had a virus prior to dx for the simple reason that most kids have a virus at some point. Of those kids who get a virus, 1 in 500 get T1. Keep in mind that T1 has been around for thousands of years at least and happens in many mammals.

 

Good points which tell us some valuable information.

Since it has been around for so longer the factors that play a role must also have been around for a long time. If I am not mistaken the first case we are aware of was in an Egyptian and by then they had domesticated animals and grains - which was a major change in the human diet. We also know that the incidence of type 1 is much higher today than it was in the past so some factor that plays a role is probably part of our modern lifestyle.

Yes! It does take time for the pancreas to lose enough cells for diabetes to be diagnosed. A virus days or weeks before diagnoses is probably not a major cause. A virus could even have come and gone many months before diagnoses.

For my daughter her pediatrician saw her six months to a year before diagnoses and when she noticed "allergic shiners" said that she would be diagnosed with some allergic or autoimmune disorder. It can't be known but I suspect that the shiners were an early warning sign that autoimmune activity was happening at the time.

 

I think we need to be cautious about spurious causative theories - first it's the "we haven't looked everywhere for the black swan" vaccine holdout and now it's the "Egyptians created vaccines" or what? Meat and grains? Darryl never said it started with the Egyptians - only that it was reported then. It could very well have been around for much longer. Correlation, no matter how close, does not mean causation.

 

It is another interesting theory though, IMO. Clearly the same could be said about...oh I don't know...the use of plastics in our food sources, but humans have definitely altered their consumption of grains and grains today do not=grains of yesteryear. We've lost much of the goodness healthwise in grains to mass production. I've begun to study this a bit and it's been pretty eye opening. From a personal standpoint when I lose the wheat, I no longer have joint pain.

I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that grain use has CAUSED autoimmune disorders but I would conclude that (assuming multifactoral causes) it contributes.

 

Yes, we are doing a LOT of things more today than of old - burning more fossil fuels, creating new chemicals, using more plastics, more houses with carpets, more refined sugar, more vaccines, living longer and having children at older ages, heavier population density, more antibacterial soaps - the list goes on and on and on.

My point is that, unless there's a suspected mechanism, not just a "stands to reason because it could affect the immune system, it does no good to point fingers at associations. Case in point:




Sorry for the size

For what it's worth, my money is on everything contributing - each and every activation of the immune system regardless of source.

 

I suspect that the offending particles the immune system reacts to "looks like" the beta cells. Couple that with a few other factors and viola.

 

Dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cattle, and even frogs get T1. Perhaps mammals in general are eating too much white bread since the days of early Egypt, or perhaps T1 is just one of the many small imperfections in mammalian physiology, such as when we get a freckle on our skin just like a dog, cat, pig, horse, cattle, or frog might get a freckle on their skin. I bet that if they started officially record-keeping freckles, the number of reported freckles might increase a lot from what it has been historically.

 

Yep. My Mom has Hashimoto's and I have had MS symptoms for years. (no lesions found as of last MRI and I got tired of doctor visits).

 

By no means do I think that wheat is the cause of diabetes. It is simply one thing we should be looking at. Interestingly, all of the animals on that list are fed wheat with the exception of frogs (well I just did a google search on that and found an aquatic animal food that advertises that it does not contain any fillers such as corn and wheat - implying that other frog food does).

But Swellman is still correct that in our modern environment we are all exposed to many novel influences.

 

swellman was being mostly sarcastic.

Actually, I wasn't being sarcastic - I was illustrating that the tendency to associate technological advances and modern agriculture with incidence of diabetes is fraught with peril - and more than a little presumptuous. I obviously failed.

 

Parents seem to have a pretty much limitless capacity for unwarranted guilt and self-flagellation when it comes to the Type 1 Diabetes of their child or children. There seems to be a need on the part of parents to try to identify A CAUSE for the diabetes (often involving action or inaction on their part), even in the absence of an ability by medical science to identify a cause.

This came up early on in conversation and I told DD that in this life, good health is not guaranteed. Life is not fair. You just do the very best you can with the hand you're dealt. :cwds:

I also told her that if she "listened to" her diabetes and avoided the 3 deadly sins (smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol, and failure to exercise regularly) then she'd outlive most of her classmates and be healthier to boot..

 

All very good points and wise advice.

 

Looking for associations is exactly what we should be doing. Stating that one has figured out a cause would be presumptuous - in reviewing this thread I can see that not one person stated that they knew the cause and almost everyone qualified their statements in some way to indicate that they did not know the cause.

 

This is what I THINK. I am not claiming to KNOW. Just my opinion....

I think that Endo/Auto-immune types of issues run in families. Just not necessarily the same ones. Kinda like allergies, I was allergic to a lot of different foods growing up, but my son that has allergies is allergic to grass, trees and weeds. Not food.

I believe that if both parents families have Endo/Auto-immune issues. Your kid is more likely to end up with something more major. Something like Type 1 or growth hormone deficiency, Lupus etc...

If only one parent has Endo/Auto immune issues in their family, their kids may have something more simple like allergies or eczema.

Because you can have generations that "Get lucky" and don't marry or have kids with another Endo/Auto -immune type family. People can think they it's not in their family history.

Again, this is just my opinion. I was told by the Endo that Type 1 has to come from both parents...

Also, whatever brought it out...Illness, stress, etc. Just pulled the trigger on a gun that was already loaded if you know what I mean. So none of that really matters. JMO

 

Yep.... Yep.... Yep.....