San Francisco Diabetes Resources

I’ve just been diagnosed with diabetes. Now what?

You can live a long and healthy life with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. You can work, go to school, have children, enjoy family and friends.

Keeping your blood sugars in a safe range helps you avoid or lower your risk of developing complications. Learn how to keep your sugars in a safe range. 

Type 2 diabetes is becoming more and more common all over the world. It’s a complicated problem of many things–city life, fast food, food insecurity, problems accessing health care, weight gain, and family genetics, and other things. 

Your body’s pancreas makes insulin. Insulin is a hormone that controls your blood sugar. Before you developed diabetes, your pancreas made insulin automatically, at exactly the right time and exactly as much as you needed. With diabetes, your pancreas makes less and less insulin, and the insulin doesn’t work as well. Levels of insulin go down over time. As the level of insulin goes down, blood sugar goes up.

Many people with type 2 diabetes use a combination of healthy eating, physical exercise and medications to control high blood sugars.

Keeping your sugars in a safe range protects your eyes, kidneys, nerves and heart over time. 

Type 1 diabetes is also becoming more common in the world, but this type only makes up about 10% of all diabetes. It’s a problem of autoimmunity that damages your body’s pancreas. People with type 1 diabetes must use insulin because the pancreas stops making enough insulin naturally. People with type 2 diabetes will often need insulin as time goes on.

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