some strides that need to be made in understanding and coping with the disease, a leading health consultant said yesterday.

Debbie Jones, coordinator of the Diabetic Centre at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, told Hamilton Lions Club members at their weekly luncheon yesterday that the epidemic was not just an individual problem, but at times became a family strain as well.

"Usually when we talk about diabetes, we talk about the epidemic,'' she said.

"It's something that impacts entire families.'' Ms Jones added that there were some misconceptions concerning the disease and said if people seriously took time to understand it, they would have a better chance of not only fighting it, but preventing it as well.

"We hear so much that people think it's because you've been eating wrong or you haven't been exercising,'' she said. "It's nothing involved with not being healthy that causes the disease. It has to do with the pancreas and its production of insulin.'' Ms Jones said the insulin the pancreas produced helped in the breakdown of food and to regulate blood sugar.

Everyone without diabetes has a blood sugar level that is kept constant.

Without insulin, the blood sugar builds up in the blood stream and that, said Ms Jones, was the fundamental problem that needed to be understood.

"One of the signs of diabetes was going to the bathroom all the time,'' she said. "That made people think it was the kidneys.

"But the pancreas was the problem,'' she continued. "The inability of the body to produce and metabolise sugar is the cause.'' Ms Jones said the main focus currently was on juvenile diabetes. She noted that there were several children throughout the Island that suffered from the disease, and it was not always easy for them to regulate treatment.

She pointed out that the children, aged 15 to 18 years, either had active lifestyles and did not regulate their injections or were wary about the needle injections and avoided them.