What causes Type 1 Diabetes?...state your theory

Type 1 and LADA
162

I hate to reopen an old discussion but am curious whether there is anyone here who followed the same path I did to T1. I was dx with stage 3 breast cancer in July 2005, had chemo and radiation in 2005-6. I was treated with rather large doses of prednisone in mid 2006 for radiation pneumonia. That fall my husband noticed a bg in the high 300s on one of my lab reports before a surgery. We were told it was from the steroids and would ‘go away’. 6 months later, same story… it’ll ‘go away’.

I started being treated with metformin in late 2006. "It should go away, but it’s been an awfully long time’. In mid-2007 I was started on fixed doses of levemir. It never did ‘go away’, apparently an unusual phenomenon. There is no history of any autoimmune disease in my family. I was finally referred to an endo (love him, and his NP!) in mid 2009. I started on i:c ration/correction factor about 6 months ago.

I have no doubt that a pancreas poisoned by chemo then assaulted by steroids is what caused/triggered my DM. Anyone else?

I could buy into the pharma conspiracy theory too :slight_smile:

Barbara

163

Genetics is the code word in medicine that means “I don’t really know so I’ll hide behide genetics” I’m inclined to believe it is the result of a retro virus .for me it was two to three weeks after I had a virual infection.

164

The week that I was DX’d was also a week that i got influenza and anthrax boosters, so possibly that. I took doxycycline once a day for a YEAR prior to DX. So vaccines and heavy antibiotic use see like likely culprits to me. I am sure the cooincidence of sleep depravation, high carb diet, and over all elevated stress levels could have contributed too, considering the amount of immune stimulation they would present in combination.

165

Well, I swore never to tell, but…

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, tiny space ships carrying fully weaned kittens showered down upon Earth during a total eclipse of the moon. The planet was seeded with kittens as part of a universe-wide program to spread purring to every galaxy.

Unfortunately for humankind, purring was developed on another planet, in a galaxy far, far away, to run on a molecule very similar to human insulin.

Now, whenever a kitten purrs on our planet, a small amount of insulin is sucked from the breath of nearby humans and used in purr-production.

Most humans make enough insulin that they have purr-power to spare, but a small percentage of humans have a quite finite sum of insulin and the kitty purrs deplete their reserves.

It’s just one of those quirks of the universe.

But there’s good news! When the momcat ship passes near Earth again, it will shower the kitties with an upgrade so they can run their purrs off of excess political speech, instead. When that happens, there will be no more type 1 diabetes, and much less blathering and bickering, too. Heaven!

166

This is a vague theory but everything is degenerating on planet earth. Global warming, poisons, toxins, pesticides, chemicals, radiation, mobile phone towers, microwaves, mutating viruses that survive our known cures, etc etc etc. Its life. I think the trigger for everyone is different but soemthing about our DNA makes us susceptible. Maybe its simple, like an expectant mother was depressed during her pregnancy? Maybe its totally random like you were exposed to too many viruses that your body couldnt fight as a youngster? I really dont know! If it was easy and I knew I’d go abck and prevent diabetes in my baby:(

167

ROFLMAO!! So glad you shared the secret. I needed a good laugh…er, theory… tonight :slight_smile:

168

I’ll give you the benefit of doubt and assume your joking.

The population on this planet is booming, especially in some of the unhealthest of countries, without exception…

The most common factor in all these opinions has been a sickness before diagnosis. Seems to me this is also the most lodgical.

Mobile phone towers, wow, I’d love to hear some of your ect,'s.

169

We all know that there is a genetic component and then a trigger or triggers.

But no one knows the exact trigger.

In auto-immune as in cancer, you need both, and some very prominent medical researchers have questioned whether or not there needs to be many triggers (i.e. multiple insults to the immune system) in order to send an immune system haywire.

Even in identical twins, both members of the pair don’t always develop type 1. According to Dr. McCulloch, when one twin develops type 1, less than 50% of the identical twins of type 1’s will develop it.

Stress might be a component, too, in that stress causes the symphony of hormones in our body to go “out of tune” – perhaps having too much or too little of cortisol, adrenaline, growth hormone, glucagon or some other combination of hormones has something to do with making the body vulnerable to a viral or bacterial or toxin triggering an auto-immune response? We’re just now learning how stresses on our systems impact our hormones during development in the womb and afterwards.

The fact that Earth’s population is booming doesn’t negate the percentage of increase in cancers, auto-immune diseases, stress-related metabolic diseases, etc. In fact, a larger population living longer due to medical, sanitation and agricultural advances only reveals more of our genetic frailties. How many more type 1’s are living to procreate now than was possible even one hundred years ago? When half of all children born didn’t make it to adulthood, only the hardiest survived to make babies of their own. Life now is less brutal and short; more of our genetic weaknesses have a chance to be exposed to triggers and manifest themselves.

170

Very interesting. I was kept out of the sun as a child (redhair), and the rest of my family are dark. I thought my mother was very forward thinking dressing me in pyjamas on the beach, and making me wear a big floppy hat. And she did the right thing for me as last year, despite never having sunburned or sunbathed, I had a melanoma removed.

So I am very torn between letting my redhaired daughters out into the sun, or risk vitamin D deficiency. So I’ll have to stick to supplements for them.

I also wonder about vaccinations. Could we be genetically susceptible to particular childhood illnesses, and perhaps in other times have died from them, because of modern medicine we have survived one thing and gone on to develop another?

171

Laugh away.
You missed the most important part of my above post - and that was “I really dont know!”.
I do know my baby son was sick incessantly. From birth through to diagnosis at 8months of age I mustve taken him to the dr. at least once every 2-3 weeks. He was always sick with something. He took heaps of antibiotics in his short life. He also had our rounds of vaccines. He was completely breastfed so no formula/cows milk theory for u s.
I have 2 other kids non-diabetic thus far.

At his birth something was different to the others. I tested positive for Strep B i think it was… and they administered antibiotics immediately as part of a study.

172

well my favorite female has a BMI of less than 25 so she does not fit the usual its your fault because you ate too much theory. Old age the older you get the more likely you are to have diabetes. My mother did at the end of her life.

173

Hi Dino , all I know, I popped up as a 42 1/2 year age woman with type 1 and from the date of diagnosis( 1983 ) I decided to handle IT to the best of my capabilities …so far so good !
I think I recall responding : it was the Polar Bear Swim attendance in 1983 , that did it …just joking .

174

I definitely wasn’t sick anytime near diagnosis. I was diagnosed at 14 years of age- type 1. I keep thinking that there’s a “reason” for this sickness. But, I’m not so sure there is a reason. I’m not even sure I was type 1 when I was diagnosed. I showed a lot of the symptoms, but not all of them. How do I know the doctors didn’t see me as a prime opportunity to capitalize on? I mean, if it was a rare cold that could be fixed, they’d make a couple thousand off me. But, if they could make me start taking insulin injections, that’s a whole lifetime of illness that I will be paying millions for by the time I’m through.

I think it was a bad batch of vaccines that I took to get into high school that caused my disease. I’m a first generation type 1 in both bloodlines. I wasn’t sick, I was phyically active.

175

A non-functioning pancreas, is the best I can do on this one to be perfectly honest. I think 'stuff happens" we don’t cause it, we don’t ask for it, like many things it just happens. I don’t know or haven’t read that they know why or how…just that it does.

176

My child was diagnosed almost 2 years before, when he was 5. Since then I am searching for the answer of the question: What was the cause???
First I thought maybe vaccination. But even if it is so, no one can prove it.
After that I read many arcticles about milk bottles which contained BPA (e.g. Avent) can cause diabetes. My son was using such kind of bottles, like almost every second baby/child here.
The latest suspicion was the inhalation steroid, which also were suspected as a reason for diabetes. How much I regret that I allow this therapy, when our doctor thought my son has asthma. I am sure he never had it. But in that time I was stupid and trusted to all the doctors. Now I think twice before giving any kind of medicament to my children.

177

Enviornmental means anything…including sun exposure, certain chemicals that you may breathe, anything that you may have put on your body, touched, smell, or eaten…It is definately not one thing that causes T1 and I think that is why it is so hard to find a cure…I read on another website where this soilder got a Anthrax vaccine and developed T1 after that…Of course he already had the gene but something has to trigger it…bascially the gun is already pre-loaded but what pulls the trigger is different in everybody…

I personally feel like there is a small alien type angry leprechaun living where my pancreas once was…lol

178

I have always had a very strong immune system, never had the flu, seldom have a cold. I’m T2 and my A1C stays around 5.1, but still I’ve had some nasty complications the docs blame on my “uncontrolled” diabetes: Diabetic Autonomic Neuropathy and Charcot have been the worst.

179

There is very strong documentation that the incidence of type 1 is increasing in children around the world, most quickly in children under 5 years old. Scientists agree that some environmental factors have to be causing the increasing incidence. Incidence means that more and more people are being diagnosed each year-- it’s not due to living longer.

The genes the predispose to type 1 diabetes have become less common in the population than they used to be, according to a number of scientific studies. More people with only a moderate genetic risk are now developing the disease.

Different people can have different causes. I know someone diagnosed after a bike accident. I was diagnosed after pregnancy. My son was diagnosed at age 1 for no apparent reason. We’ll never know. For most people, we may never know.

I wrote a website summarizing the scientific studies on the main environmental factors linked to type 1 diabetes: www.diabetesandenvironment.org. There is pretty good evidence that viruses, vitamin D deficiency, early diet and nutrition, a leaky gut, weight gain, stress, and some other factors can contribute to type 1 development. But none have really been able to account for the increasing incidence.

So I “stated my theory” in a peer-reviewed scientific journal (co-authored with a researcher who specializes in type 2 and chemicals) suggesting that the increasing incidence may in part be due to endocrine disrupting chemicals-- a factor that has not yet really been considered in type 1 diabetes research, but should be:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21502091.

I’d guess that many of these factors could work together, along with genetic background, to trigger the disease in different ways in different people. Chemicals can interact with a number of factors, e.g., by interfering with vitamin D synthesis, increasing gut permeability, promoting weight gain… so I think that looking at the other factors without considering chemicals will be missing the whole picture.

I have a listserv on the topic if anyone is interested; see the “get involved” page of www.diabetesandenvironment.org.

Sarah Howard
Collaborative on Health and the Environment

1 Like
180

Dear Sarah,

Thank you so much for the link.
You did a great job, I’ve never found so much information about the possible causes as now, at your site.
I agree with you, it is not possible to point on one single cause, probably it is complex.
When my child was diagnosed, I’ve tried desperated to find the reason, why he became diabetic. I made a questionnaire, and asked many parents to fill it in. But I realized, how many cases, so many causes, nothing is significant:
The results:
http://www.kerdoivem.hu/res/23084592028675/

The questionnaire is about childhood diabetes, if someone wants to fill it, please do it on this link:

http://www.kerdoivem.hu/kerdoiv/230845920/1/

Reka

181

Really? That makes me feel better. 27+ years and still going strong.