Your body may actually produce too much insulin, but the insulin doesn t work the way it should. Type 2 is by far the most common type of diabetes, accounting for 90 to 95 percent of all cases. A third type of diabetes, Gestational Diabetes, occurs in pregnant women. For 95 percent of women who develop gestational diabetes, however, blood glucose levels return to normal when the pregnancy ends. Inherited problems, surgery, drugs, malnutrition, infections, and other illnesses can all cause diabetes.
Some doctors still use the oral glucose tolerance test.
To keep your diabetes under control, you need to be under a doctor s care. Your doctor may also suggest that you use a home testing kit to monitor your blood sugar levels yourself. To test your blood sugar level, a drop of blood from your finger is placed on a specially coated strip. This testing strip has a chemical on it that changes color according to how much glucose is in your blood. The color is compared to a chart or else the strip is inserted into a machine that is programmed to read it.