Type 1 diabetes really is the type that hits out the blue seemingly without explanation. It is not caused by obesity, poor diet, or lack of exercise. Type 1 is

Type 1 diabetes really is the type that hits out the blue seemingly without explanation. It is not caused by obesity, poor diet, or lack of exercise. Type 1 is caused by the body's immune system turning round and destroying the pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin. There has been a lot of suggestion that this may be triggered by a viral infection that the immune system is trying to fight, but we're not 100% sure. It can hit at any age, although most commonly it tends to be in the teens and early twenties. Regardless, if your sister truly has type 1 diabetes (and it can often be misdiagnosed) then she has few to no working beta cells left, and it is entirely not her fault. Interestingly, there is a stronger genetic component to type 1 diabetes than there is to type 2 diabetes. We can analyse a set of 30 or so locations in the genome and give you a score, which is how likely you are to trigger type 1 diabetes. Most of the score is based on just one region in the genome, the HLA region which controls the way your immune system distinguishes between self and enemy. A person with a low score can still get type 1 diabetes, but it is much less likely. We know that to get type 1 diabetes, you need to be susceptible (that we can measure with the genetic test) but also there needs to be some kind of trigger. I don't think having a second child was the trigger, but something was.