This post is somewhat a followup on a post of mine from over a year ago entitled Diabetes - A Disease by Any Other Name? The post was mostly inspired by a comment Jenny Ruhl of the Blood Sugar 101 site made in her first podcast interview with Jimmy Moore - to paraphrase:
Diabetes is no more a disease than to say "cough" is a disease.
I tend to agree with the above in the current context of the term diabetes being synonymous with hyperglycemia, as opposed to defining it as pancreatic dysfunction. This is because many diseases/disorders are called diabetes that just so happen to be characterized by, among other things, the symptom (manifestation) of hyperglycemia (fasting and/or postprandial). Indeed Jenny herself is a MODY (Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young), a relatively rare genetic form of diabetes with an underlying defect that has been identified. Jenny cannot be cured with current treatments because her disease is inherent. Thus her hyperglycemia (symptom/manifestation) can be likened to a cough, but her diabetes (genetic anomaly) cannot. I hope that makes sense.
