Ayurveda is a natural route of medicine to lead to a better overall health. It uses healing of the body and mind in a more natural way. I found that it uses five elements including air, water, space, earth, and fire. In a more realistic way they use natural ways to help heal and bring balance such as dietary changes, herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage, and meditation. I found it interesting that a big part of ayurveda is promoting health and consciousness. Being in tune with your surroundings and environment is a key aspect in ayurveda healing. Listening to your body is an important aspect of healing naturally. If something makes you feel sluggish, cutting it out of your diet would be an easy natural healing method. 

There are many things in life that need medical treatment, such as an inflamed appendix or a broken bone, but I also think that there are a lot of ways to prevent and even treat illnesses without medication. Things such as a proper diet and being in tune with your reaction to food can help prevent things such as bowel issues and even obesity. Keeping stress levels lower has also been shown to improve the body's overall health. Using ayurveda methods such as massage and acupuncture can help let go of stress and bring awareness of the body and the mind. 

Even though many things can heal naturally without medical intervention, diabetes is something that needs medical intervention but can also benefit from natural life improvements. There are two main types of diabetes, both of which need healthy lifestyles that can be helped with ayurveda. Watching what you eat and exercising can always help improve or even in some cases, it can help prevent diabetes all together.

One thing that I found very interesting with type one diabetes versus type two is that the concordance of identical twins having type one is 50%, and type two is 90%. This really intrigued me because of the differences in the different types of diabetes. Type one is a genetic predisposition where the cells stop recognizing the beta cells that produce insulin. The body then begins to attack those cells. This usually happens at a younger age and there is nothing that person could do to change this or prevent it from happening. Type two, however, is a bit different because the environment affects whether a person gets type two or not. This includes the amount of exercises the person maintains, the dietary intake, and family history as well. The fact that it is more likely that both twins will get type two diabetes than type one shows just how much environmental factors and habits are similar between relatives and more specifically, twins.

Insulin is an important factor in diabetes. The body either cannot produce it, or it isn’t able to use it when it is made. Finding out that insulin is expensive for basically no reason because it is so cheap to create made me really question things about why. Insulin is made with recombinant DNA technology and puts human DNA that creates insulin into bacteria which then grows and replicates it. It is then collected and purified. It is a simple process and is easily done. It is not made from a rare substance, and it is not overly difficult to store. This is why it sounds like it should be fairly cheap. Not to mention that it is very necessary for insulin dependent people. Looking into it further, I found that it is because of the drug companies that own the rights to insulin. They make very small changes, but do it very often and get the patents for that specific form. This makes it so other companies cannot replicate and produce their own insulin. It also prevents any generic brands of insulin from forming, so patients have to pay for the on brand every time which is always so much more expensive. Health care is supposed to be helping those in need, and since they have the resources to create something so necessary on a cheap basis, we should make the big pharmaceuticals reduce their prices. This is a problem that should not be occurring. Another reason why this is so hard is because many people who are in the lower class area based on their incomes, they do not have the money to eat as healthy as other people can. They cannot pay for dance classes or gym passes. This makes them already more likely to develop type two diabetes. The life saving medication should be on a cheaper scale to help them get by. 

A study has shown that the average annual cost to take care of someone with diabetes is approximately 2.3 times higher than that of an average person. I think this goes along with the last paragraph very well. Many times diabetes is something that cannot be controlled by the individual. It isn’t always that they need to eat better or exercise more. It has been shown that type one diabetes usually happens in thinner people rather than just overweight. It not only shortens the life span usually, but it also adds so much money that the person will have to pay throughout their lives. Many people will ration their insulin as well just to save them extra money. This is such a big problem that should be fixed already. I do not understand. 

I did not think about all of the extra side effects that diabetes creates. Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar is a hard thing to deal with and can create many side effects. This includes high blood pressure, which is hard on your blood vessels and puts more pressure on the heart. It causes many changes to hormone, protein, and chemical levels in the body as well. It also can cause a change in skin color which I thought was quite interesting, but the main thing that I found interesting with this was that it can cause depression. With the different types of imbalances that it creates, it has been shown to make depression more common with those living with hyperglycemia. I am in a histology class this semester as well, and I also found it interesting that with higher levels of fat in the body, it will produce a bad hormone that encourages fat, and vice versa with lower levels of fat. It is like a negative cycle with fat that creates more fat. This is the same thing here. With diabetes causing hyperglycemia causing depression, it will usually make that person give up wanting to try rather than actually find the energy to exercise and watch what they eat.