This is a bit of a rant. I get on this horse periodically, ride it around, waving my flags and guns, foaming at the mouth a bit, going slightly nutty. You'll get used to it. Or ignore it.

What is the deal with lumping both types of diabetes together? Seriously. If I have to read one more freakin' article about how high fructose corn syrup causes diabetes or get one more stupid email from some clueless acquaintance, telling me that if I just put my kid on the Atkins diet, she'll be cured, I'm going to go to the top of the water tower and start picking people off. OK, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but holy cow, does it make my blood boil.

There are TWO types of diabetes. Count 'em - One, Two. One is caused by the pancreas's failure to produce insulin, the other is due to the failure of the body to properly use the insulin the pancreas makes. It's a matter of a simple Google search to discover this. And yet the media continues to trumpet "Soda Causes Diabetes." "Obesity Leads To Diabetes Epidemic." And then I get the jerks telling me that it's all my fault that my daughter has diabetes. I shouldn't have fed her soda. Or cookies. Or candy. Right. Because that's all I ever fed my toddler. Moron.

I get the difference. I am not one of those people who say "Oh, if you have diabetes, it's because you're fat." I know that being overweight can contribute to having type 2, but you have to have some sort of genetic predisposition, otherwise every person who was overweight would develop it. I know plenty of slim people who have type 2. It can't all be blamed on a poor diet and lack of exercise.

Most of America (and probably the rest of the world) doesn't realize this. I honestly preferred when it was called Juvenile Diabetes. It distinguished it from Adult Onset Diabetes. I'm not sure who decided the names needed changing, or even why, but taking away those two distinctions has led to some serious amounts of misunderstanding.

A year or so ago, there was a report on my local NPR station about how diabetes was rampant in the Latin community. The report focused on how a CDE was helping people with their shopping, explaining how empty calories caused diabetes. How even children were getting diagnosed with diabetes now.

I kind of lost it. I emailed the station and expressed my dismay at their failure to differentiate between the two. I was polite, but to the point. The email I got in return was flippant and rude, basically telling me that most people have type 2 and they didn't see the need to differentiate between the two types. Of course, I shot off another email, explaining how their misinformation meant that I, and thousands of parents of kids with type 1, already have to explain the differences, that reports like this just reinforced incorrect beliefs about the disease. That email went unanswered.

So, why? Why did they do away with juvenile and adult onset? It made so much more sense? Better yet, why don't they give one of them a completely different name? I'm tired of trying to educate the masses, especially since most people are of the opinion that "I saw it on TV, so it must be true."

Getting off my horse now.