Diabetes mellitus occurs when the pancreas doesn’t make enough or any of the hormone insulin, or when the insulin produced doesn’t work effectively. In
diabetes, this causes the level of glucose in the blood to be too high.
In Type 1 diabetes the cells in the pancreas that make insulin are destroyed, causing a severe lack of insulin. This is thought to be the result of the
body attacking and destroying its own cells in the pancreas – known as an autoimmune reaction.
It’s not clear why this happens, but a number of explanations and possible triggers of this reaction have been proposed. These include:
• infection with a specific virus or bacteria;
• exposure to food-borne chemical toxins; and
• exposure as a very young infant to cow’s milk, where an as yet unidentified component of this triggers the autoimmune reaction in the body.
