Diabetes, nutrition and metabolic diseases are the medical specialty that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of patients with metabolic disorders.
Metabolism is a complex physico-chemical process by which complex organic substances are degraded or synthesized with the release or consumption of energy. By metabolizing the nutritional principles – proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, minerals and vitamins, essential compounds are formed for the body, with an energetic, structural and functional role. The term metabolism comes from the Greek: metabolism – change.
Diabetes mellitus is a condition characterized by an increase in blood sugar accompanied or not by increased insulin resistance with changes in metabolism: carbohydrate, lipid, protein. Diabetes can begin or progress with acute metabolic complications – diabetic coma or chronic complications: neurological – diabetic neuropathy, renal – diabetic nephropathy, ophthalmological – diabetic retinopathy, cardiovascular.
Nutrition studies the energy needs and nutritional principles involved in the normal development of the body, the relationship between food intake and energy consumption and the consequences of excess food or nutritional deficiencies.
Metabolic diseases are characterized by the excessive accumulation of certain chemical compounds with neurological, hepatic, cardiac, delayed somatic development. The best known genetic metabolic diseases are: phenylketonuria with phenylalanine accumulation and its metabolites, glycogenoses with glycogen accumulation in muscles and liver, lysosomal diseases due to deficiency of lysosomal enzymes with accumulation of undegraded substrate in the nervous system, liver, spleen, kidneys, myocardium, gout – accumulation of excess uric acid that is deposited in the joints and kidneys, hemochromatosis – excess iron in the liver, pancreas, skin, Wilson’s disease – copper deposition in the liver, nervous system, cornea – ring Kyser Fleicher.