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Type 1 diabetes is when the body makes no insulin. This is what we call an autoimmune disease. It can also sometimes be known as "juvenile-onset diabetes." It's typically seen in younger people, and for some unknown reason, the body attacks the insulin-producing cells and destroys them, so there's no insulin. Type 2 diabetes, which is the far more prevalent type of diabetes - 90 percent of people with diabetes have type 2 - this is also known as "adult-onset diabetes," and this is the condition which is involved with what we call insulin resistance. You may be making insulin, but your body isn't using insulin quite as well.

What are symptoms of diabetes?

Type 2 comes on very gradually. People can have it and not know it, for one thing. But the classic symptoms of diabetes are excessive urination, often at night. If you have been urinating at night and hadn't been urinating at night before, that's a clue that there may be a problem with the sugars being too high. Because you're urinating excessively, you get thirsty, so excessive thirst is another important symptom. With type 2 diabetes, blurry vision is commonly seen when the sugar has been high for too long, and fatigue, just general fatigue. For type 1 diabetes, the main symptoms are the same excessive thirst, excessive urination, and also weight loss, and if it gets down the road too far with type 1, nausea and vomiting, and that's when you're in metabolic problems. Your system gets very acidy. More on Diabetes..

What is diabetes ?
Gina, Dr. Gross

Diabetes is a problem with metabolizing sugar. Sugar is the body's main fuel, and the way the body breaks it down is using a hormone called insulin. Insulin allows sugar to go into the cells, and insulin also allows sugar to be broken up into energy. So what diabetes is, is either a lack of insulin or an inability of the body to use insulin, and with that, the blood sugars go up because they can't get into the cells.

And most things you eat turn to sugar, is that right?

Yes. Certainly the carbohydrates: breads, starches, potatoes, spaghetti. They're just little sugar molecules strung together, and they'll be broken down into sugar in the guts.