Johns Hopkins Health Alert
What Causes Type 1 Diabetes?
UPDATE
As part of our ongoing effort to ensure that this website is up to date, we have determined that the information in the article What Causes Type 1 Diabetes? is no longer current, and has therefore been removed.
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Posted in Diabetes on November 8, 2007
Reviewed September 2011
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I am amazed that none of the researchers into the cause of type 1 Diabetes have focussed on the idea of the effects of traumatic emotional experience as the final trigger. Read some 19th century novels and note how many times this idea occurs - "After the loss/death/jilting of her lover, she died of a broken heart". I believe this was Diabetes, unknown/not understood back in those days.
I believe it takes two conditons: 1. Genetic predisposition. (we all agree on this) 2. A really severe traumatic emotional experience, resulting in a shattering of a person's "heart" for life. Your wife/husband/fiance etc. is suddenly killed in a car crash. You're physically OK but devastated spritually.
Every one of the six people I know that have type 1 diabetes (including my own daughter)have been through exactly the above scenario.
We cannot of course prevent traumatic experiences. What we CAN do is identify those persons with genetic diabetes history, and have a watchdog father/mother/brother/sister/family doctor be ready with some kind of pancreatic stimulus/protection/"firewall" to keep the natural insulin production going until the patient gets over it.
To my mind, this is an extremely important area that the researchers should be working on.
Posted by: jbruce | November 13, 2007 10:56 AM