剑桥医学英语 Supplementary Microlecture —diabetes

1) Hello everyone.

To start with, I would like to give you a math puzzle.

I had 10 chocolate bars and ate 9 of them, what do I have now?

If my suggested answer is “Diabetes”, does it make sense?

Anyway, the topic from me today is the Mystery ofdiabetes, do you know the full name of diabetes is actually diabetes mellitus, why is that?

In this term, the first part, diabetes was borrowed from Greek, which means “to pass through”, what passes through our body? Yes, urine! 

Mellitus means “something sweet”, what tastes sweet in the world? Yes, sugar!

Then the literal meaning of diabetes mellitus is sugar in the urine. And that is how this term was coined hundreds of years ago.

2) Now here come our learning objectives of today.

The definition of diabetes, the leading cause and the symptoms. 

To achieve these objectives, we’ll focus on the skills of giving definition, drawing analogy and forming medical terms.

Well, first of all. What is diabetes?

Do you think diabetes has a sudden onset or it develops over time?

As Rome was not built in a day, it takes time for diabetes to become evident.

Therefore, the first key word is chronic. For patients living with diabetes, they would have some symptoms related to metabolism, so, it’s a metabolic disease.

What should be responsible for diabetes? As we mentioned earlier, high blood sugar. 

All right, with these key words, the definition of diabetes is a chronic metabolic disorder, in which there are high blood sugar (glucose) levels in the body.

To define something, apart from using A is B structure, you might as well use A is defined as B, and A denotes B.

3) As you see, high blood sugar is the culprit for diabetes, then what’s the leading cause of Diabetes?

To explain this question in a simple way, please look at this key, it’s the key to unlock the door of body cells, so that nutrient, like sugar from the food we eat can enter the cells, and provide us with energy to keep us healthy and lively. The key has its own name. That is Insulin.

But, for some patients, like those with Type 1 diabetes, the key is missing, in other words, there is no insulin, then what happens?

Yes, the door cannot be opened; and sugar is kept out of the body cells.

For some other patients, like those with type 2 diabetes, the key is there, but the lock is broken.

So, sugar still has no access to the body cells, but to stay in the blood. What would happen next?

As you see, sugar in the blood gets higher and higher until it reaches the very high level and can only be passed through urine. Diabetes thus develops.

4) Now we have found the leading cause of diabetes, what’s that? 

Diabetes arises with inadequate insulin production or utilization.

Thanks to the use of analogy, insulin is compared or, analogous to a key, this mechanism can be more easily clarified. In fact, similar examples are also used in our daily life to help us more effectively understand some complex mechanisms, such as the heart is analogous to a pump, our brain is analogous to a computer.

5) With the help of analogy, we have found the leading cause of diabetes, what does a diabetic patient often complain about?

In fact, a couple of symptoms are present for a patient with diabetes, these symptoms can be briefly reduced into ‘3 polys’. Three polys, sound strange, um?

Poly, is a commonly used prefix which means “many”, or “a large amount of”, patients with diabetes, they are abnormally hungry and could eat a horse, this is poly-phagia.

Meanwhile, they always feel extremely thirsty, and can drink a lot, this is poly-dipsia.

They also have frequent urge to pass water, and a large amount of water, this is poly-uria.

3 polys can help us more efficiently understand the major symptoms of diabetes.

6) Well, here is a quick recap of what we’ve learned so far.

The definition of diabetes, its leading cause as well as symptoms.

We’ve also acquainted us with some skills of giving definition and making an analogy.

Diabetes has now become a global epidemic, to arouse people’s awareness on the danger of Diabetes, November 14th has been set aside as World Diabetes Day, as for the complications and prevention of Diabetes, we’ll move on to that next time.

Until then, goodbye for now.