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Type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is a disease in which your body cannot make enough insulin (a hormone that helps control the amount of glucose or sugar in your blood), or does not properly use the insulin it makes. Type 2 diabetes is caused by several different risk factors and accounts for 90% of diabetes cases in Canada.

People over the age of 40 with a parent or sibling with diabetes are at a higher risk of having type 2. Your ethnic background is also a factor.

Understanding type 2 diabetes

Symptoms, treatment, and complications from type 2 diabetes may vary from person to person. The following information will help you learn more about this disease and provide you with helpful tools, assessments and resources.

  • Symptoms

    People can experience a wide range of symptoms before being diagnosed with type 2—however, some may have no symptoms at all.

  • Treatment

    Learn how type 2 diabetes can be managed with healthy foods, medication, regular exercise and losing weight (if overweight or obese).

  • Complications

    If left untreated or improperly managed, diabetes can lead to a variety of life-threatening complications.

We need a strategy now

Although people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes have different journeys, including whether or not they experience symptoms, there is one issue that unites all people living with the disease. Canada has no strategy to address one of the most significant health-care crisis of our time.

With no dedicated support or action to tackle the diabetes epidemic, it means that, every 24 hours:

  • more than 20 Canadians die of diabetes-related complications
  • 480 more Canadians are diagnosed with this devastating disease
  • 14 Canadians have a lower limb amputation
  • our health care system spends $75 million treating diabetes

Diabetes deep dives

Looking for in-depth information on diabetes management? Our Deep Dives video series answers your need-to-know questions now.

Learn more

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