Diabetes is a condition in which your blood sugar, or blood glucose, rises to unhealthy levels. Insulin, a hormone created in the pancreas, enables glucose from your food to be transferred from blood to your cells in order to provide energy for your body. When glucose is not properly processed or if not enough insulin is created to help the processing, glucose is trapped in the blood and cannot reach your cells.

Type 2 diabetes is often treated with diet, exercise, medication taken orally, or with direct infusions of insulin. Oral medications help the insulin the body produces be more effective in processing glucose. Insulin injected through a syringe or delivered by an insulin pump mimics the way the pancreas would naturally produce and distribute insulin.

If you have been diagnosed with diabetes, you need a plan of action developed by your doctor or an endocrinologist to keep your condition under control. As part of this plan, or in addition to it, you can monitor several areas of your health to help reduce complications caused by diabetes.

Many conditions caused by diabetes can be serious and even life threatening. These include:
Heart disease
High blood pressure
Stroke
Kidney disease
Eye damage
Foot problems