Did you get sick? Have to take antibiotics and they damaged your pancreas? Does it run in your family? Or are you like me and none of the above happend and you just found yourself laid up in the hospital one day?
At a personal level asking “Why did you get T1 diabetes?” is like asking “Do you still beat your wife?” e.g. There is no good answer because the question at some level implies guilt for what was probably some combination of genetics and environment, which are nearly the same as the genetics and environment of everyone else in your family and your community.
“Why didn’t they get diabetes?” is not really a meaningful question at a personal level. At a scientific level I do encourage it to be studied but again such studies have to be careful to remove the opposite of what I object to above, “survivor’s guilt”.
“Why me?” thoughts happen, and you’ll eventually find your way to their conclusion, but you don’t need to be here asking “Why you?”.
I think coming to terms with this question is part of your personal journey. When I was first diagnosed, I sought the answer to this question, thinking if I knew how I got it, perhaps I could fix it, or at least help others. Over time, I realized that I would never understand the process that led me to get diabetes. And then as Tim notes, the mere question itself became irrelevant.
My family has diabetes. I probably did things in my life which placed me at risk. But as Tim notes, lots of people have this and don’t get diabetes. My diabetes, “Just Is.” And over time it has become “Just Me.”
I think you may have misunderstood what I was asking. Some people get sick and the virus attacks their pancreas and I have herd of others taking anitbiotics and it destroys it. So the Q’s im asking is did something like this happen to you? How did you get it or do you not know? Im not trying to offend anyone here.
It is an autoimmune disease. Thus it is of no importance what might have triggered this reaction. Was it the flu shot or what ever? Maybe, but would you and I be healthy without this trigger? No very likely something else will have triggered the immune reaction. It is a genetic predisposition and the genes have already done their part when the fatal immune reaction begins. Most likely it is just a small portion of the T-cells going rogue according to the findings of Dr. Faustman. Why and when is still a mystery but it seems that type 1 diabetics have more autoimmune problems than the general population.
Ok, straight answer: No one in my family, that I know of (people a long time ago didn’t always reveal anything about their health) has diabetes, 1 or 2. So, as far as I know, I’m the only one. It manifested itself just this June. I went in for an appointment for something unrelated, and surprise! You’re going on insulin today.
Not knowing anything about this affecting any member of my family, both sides, I did do a little research. My paternal grandmother was Finnish, and having read that Finns have a high rate of diabetes, I thought maybe I inherited a gene from her. Or not.
As for the environmental trigger (e.g. virus), I have no clue.
It’s an amazing and lucky thing to me that I am alive in an age where insulin treatment is available (it’s only been around since, I think, 1921! And this disease has been around since Egyptian times!). Even if it’s never discovered what exactly causes this, I’m just glad I can manage it and have a chance to be around and relatively healthy past age 42.
I don’t buy the reasons you are postulating. A virus doesn’t attack the pancreas. Antibiotics don’t destroy the pancreas.
In autoimmune T1 onset, the body’s own immune system does the destruction of the pancreas. The details of the autoimmune destruction of the pancreas aren’t awfully well known but in many cases it seems to develop slowly over years (see Wikipedia page for LADA in particular). With it slowly setting up for years… it seems pretty hard to find exactly when the autoimmune response began, or exactly what the trigger was.
It might have been diagnosed right after a virus or some other infection requiring antibiotics (especially an infection that would reduce insulin sensitivity and tip the balance towards DKA), but it seems to me that isn’t really the cause of the autoimmune destruction. It’s just what tipped the balance into DKA and triggered the diagnosis; the autoimmune destruction had probably been going on for a long time before that.
I don’t really mean to upset your current belief system. If you think that antibiotics caused some specific cases of T1 and that helps you cope and move on to the next stage of acceptance, that’s not so bad. But I think the immune system is way too complex to really find a single one-event cause like you want to find. It seems much more likely that it’s a billion cumulative interactions between the immune system and genetics and environment that may be the trigger.
Just my beliefs :-). Sorry they don’t fit into your simple categories.
Tim, thanks for this explanation. So the real question is, what caused the autoimmune destruction, i.e. why was the body attacking itself? Is there any science out there that has discovered a cause for any autoimmune disease? My first instinct is to say “no,” but I’m not well-read on this subject.
i get what you mean…my son was 100% fine and a week later diagnosed t1 like a totally unexplained thing. I am guessing that you were healthy and going about your business and whammo a T1 dx…same thing here…
He was full on football preparing for semi state finals…running a lot,eating a lot drinking a lot pretty normal for his teenager body then we realized his dress pants were way big, a Fri night he was drinking like crazy (water) and a few days later I asked for a urine test…BINGO…
That was 8 months ago and he is handling it all amazingly well for 15 and sophomore in HS
How about you?
A single cause? I doubt that it will ever be that easy. There are many factors that seem to contribute to autoimmune disease including genetic and environmental ones.
Complicating the statistics, T1 diabetics are much more likely to be diagnosed and treated and live long lives in places with good medical care. Some look at the statistics that show lots more T1 diabetics in say Sweden or the UK and say that the problem is worse there; but contrast that with subsaharan Africa where most T1’s die without diagnosis, and few live more than a few years due to lack of availability of insulin.
Even in the US there’s no good statistical reporting system. I mean, when I was diagnosed there was no government registry counting me as a T1 diabetic, and I’m not sure there is a US registry like that today. Grassroots opposition to government mandated health care will probably make sure that lack of good statistics continues. The insurance company probably knew but they seem to keep “forgetting” and reclassifying me as T2 because I’m an adult now 
Oh God, I hear about this all the time. I always felt lucky I have decent doctors, but now reading what you write I feel triply lucky.
I’ll have to do more reading about this (type 1 around the world).
The diabeetus fairy (A little Wilford Brimley with wings) came and visited me in the middle of the night last May, and blasted my pancreas with a magic wand. So there I was, age 45, and a T1.
No diabetics in my family. I’ve always been healthy & never got more than a cold. Ended up in ICU at age 53 Type 1. My mother attributes it to stress. Whatever.
No Diabetes in my family, I’m the first! yea. But, autoimmune diseases do. I believe I was prone to some sort of autoimmune something and possibly a virus pushed it over the edge? I don’t remember anything in particular, looking back I can remember the symptoms starting but it took several months before I went in and got checked out. My mom believed it was some flu I had earlier in the year, who knows.
I stepped on a nail.
I tripped over a Diabetes nest and it grabbed me. Other than that, no clue.
A visit from alien space craft, one prob, and life was changed for ever.
Seriously, I had a month of odd hypos after meals then one day a 106 fever that lasted about 6 hours. From then on, loss of weight and symptom after symtom until diagnosis. Only a aunt in a large family had T1D, otherwise not Ds in the family.
Finally diagnosis, insulin, gained 30 LBS in two weeks and the adventure was on, 40 years ago.
Hey my mother said the same thing! Of course, many people are stressed and don’t get T1. Or T2. Or anything, for that matter.
it runs in my family on both sides and i got sick with what the dr thought was the flu but turned out to be diabetes.
Had third baby age 36! NO symptoms just found it myself after worrying it could happen. Had a bro with T1 onset 14 watched him struggle for years to control and then die at age 44 from the D (stroke).