Immune-mediated diabetes is another term for Type-1 diabetes. In immune-mediated diabetes cell in the pancreas are destroyed by the body’s own immune system. This eventually leads to the total failure of the body’s ability to produce insulin, a hormone which is needed to allow to cells to use the sugar in your body for energy. When your body does not have insulin, blood sugar builds up in your bloodstream and causes bodily damage. Without it you would die.
People with immune-mediated diabetes must take at least one shot of insulin a day. It is injected under the skin. There is no pill for insulin because the juices in your stomach would destroy it. Currently, scientists are looking for new way that insulin could be administered.
Immune-mediated diabetes may occur suddenly. There are many ways to detect it. The symptoms of immune mediated diabetes are as follows:
- High levels of sugar in the blood
- High levels of blood levels in the urine
- Frequent urination
- Bedwetting (in children) when they normally stay dry
- Excessive thirst
- Excessive hunger
- Extreme weight loss
- Weight loss in spite of excess hunger
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Irritability
Immune-Mediated Diabetes & Cow’s Milk
Cow’s milk consumption in childhood has been suggested by some to promote the development of type-1, or immune-mediated diabetes. It may also be a cause to other immune-mediated or neurological diseases. Many studies have led people to believe that the introduction of cow’s milk into infant formula increases the risk of diabetes; however, further studies are needed.
The concept that cow’s milk may be harmful roots from studies tested on animal. It seems as though; cow’s milk proteins have been proven ‘diabetogenic’ because wheat and soybean proteins often cause higher rates of autoimmune diabetes. This would not only apply to the cow’s milk protein, but to other proteins as well.
Studies have been made in which babies of diabetes-prone families were observed. Scientists have found that infants getting formula that includes cow’s milk are likely to later develop autoimmune reactions such as immune-mediated diabetes. These findings were reported at the 59th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, reports ScienceNew.org.
The studies reveal that a baby’s immune system largely ignores cows’ proteins if they have been chopped up. However, contact with an intact protein in cows’ milk, which is actually bovine insulin, may lead to immune-mediated diabetes or other disorders. This triggers the autoimmunity, they think, because the islet cells of the pancreas resemble bovine insulin. Antibodies would therefore attack the cells.
