Your need for insulin may change with age, though. Of those with type 2 diabetes, only 40% use insulin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people don’t-many are able to control their diabetes through diet and exercise, oral medication, or a combination of both. Photo credit: dzika_mrowka - Getty Images Myth # 3 If you have type 2 diabetes, you need insulin. To tell the difference, your doctor may test for certain antibodies in your blood.
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Patients with type 1 need to take insulin to normalize their blood sugar, or they will become very ill. With type 2, the pancreas makes insulin, but the body doesn’t respond well to it. The two types of diabetes have different causes: In type 1 diabetes, “the body attacks the pancreatic beta cells by mistake, causing them to stop making insulin,” the hormone that lowers glucose in the blood, says Dr.
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adults have been diagnosed with type 1, but sometimes grown-ups are misdiagnosed with the more common type 2, says Sara Pinney, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. There’s a reason type 1 diabetes isn’t called juvenile diabetes anymore-you can get it at any age, says Petersen. Myth # 2 You can only get type 1 diabetes as a kid. And when you have a hankering for a sweet, focus on foods with naturally occurring sugar. If you’re at risk, your best bet is to lower your total calorie intake and get those calories from nutrient-rich foods like non-starchy vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat protein and dairy, says Christine Lee, M.D., of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
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Another potential culprit: eating red meat. “But keep in mind that fat has twice as many calories as sugar,” says Matt Petersen, managing director of medical information at the American Diabetes Association. Being overweight, however, is one of the major risk factors, and foods that are high in added sugar tend to be high in calories.