Diabetes can lead to blindness, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputations and nerve damage.

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD) reports that more than 23 million people, or nearly 8 percent of the U.S. population, have type I or type II diabetes, and both types are on the rise.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder affecting the way the body uses and digests food. The food you eat is broken down into glucose and circulated in the blood as sugar -- the body's source of fuel. Insulin (produced by the pancreas) moves the glucose/sugar from the blood into the cells. If you have diabetes, however, your pancreas produces less or no insulin. As a result, excess glucose builds up in the blood, creating major issues for the body.

In his new book, Diabetes Rising (Kaplan, $26.95), medical journalist Dan Hurley sheds some light on this mysterious disease.

Why focus on diabetes?

I have had type I, or "juvenile," diabetes, since 1975, and I simply got sick and tired of reading and seeing so much information that is outdated and/or dead wrong.

The main message we hear over and over again is that diabetes is totally manageable if you just take care of yourself, so any problems that develop are your own fault. And that's a terrible lie.

Explain the difference between the two types of diabetes.

Cars run on gas; bodies run on glucose -- the sugar in your blood that supplies every cell with energy. But glucose can't get into those cells without insulin, the hormonal key that unlocks the cell walls.

With type I diabetes, your body stops producing insulin because of an autoimmune attack causing your white blood cells to target and destroy the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Type I diabetics must take insulin for the rest of their lives.

With type II, as your weight and age increase, your body develops resistance to normal insulin levels, and your insulin-producing cells slowly grow weaker. Many people can prevent or reverse the early stages of type II through diet or exercise. When that doesn't work, pills are often necessary, and sometimes insulin.

If diet, insulin or pills can treat diabetes, what's the problem?

The treatments hold diabetes at bay, but they don't "cure" it. Most diabetics still have higher blood-sugar levels on average than people without the disease. The result is serious damage to your eyes, the nerve endings in your feet, your kidneys and your heart. In fact, diabetes triples your risk of heart disease. Keeping your blood-sugar levels as near to normal as possible lowers these risks.

Does eating sweets cause diabetes?

That is a terrible myth. Neither kind of diabetes is caused by sugar. It's true that eating something sweet can raise your blood-glucose level quickly, but then so can eating a plate of french fries or even a banana. People get obsessed with the idea that if they just avoid sugar, everything will be fine. It's far more important to watch your total calories, and in particular your total intake of carbohydrates.

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.repliedToText@

@Nyx.replyAnswerText@

Reply to this Comment @Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@