Is one type of diabetes worse than the other?

Is one type of diabetes worse than the other?

Anne Peters, MD, FACP, CDE (Professor and Director of Clinical Diabetes Programs, USC Keck School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What causes type 2 diabetes?; Does type 1 diabetes only occur in childhood?; Is one type of diabetes worse than the other? and more...

Diabetes is a very serious disease, and contrary to what many, many people come to me saying, there is no such thing as a "little diabetes." Diabetes is diabetes is diabetes. It is deadly, and if you don't treat it, it is like cancer. Trust me, I have seen people die from it in their 20s and 30s. I've seen blindness, amputation. I have seen horrible things from diabetes; things that I don't even want to remember. So, untreated diabetes is very bad. I don't think that there is any bad or worse between type 1 and type 2, and I specifically think that if you treat diabetes, you can avoid most of the complications. Therefore, I look at it from a more positive perspective. This is a treatable disease. It isn't cancer. It is not invariably fatal, and both types are equally treatable. So I don't think one is worse than the other, but I think ignoring it is the worst thing of all.