If you have family members with type 1 diabetes (not the out-of-shape-poor-eating type 2 diabetes), you can be born with it and still not have it show up until you're in your late 20s. That's what happened to me. Type 2 diabetes, essentially the type that shows up at middle-age for out-of-shape people, you still make insulin but your body has become resistant to it, so you'll usually take pills so your body will use the insulin, or you can control it through diet. Type 1 diabetes means that your body is either not producing insulin at all, or that it is losing its ability to produce insulin. Most people with type 1 diabetes have to take insulin through injection.
That's because alcohol inhibits the release of ADH, or the anti-diuretic hormone. The less ADH you have, the more fluid you lose.
The crazy thing is that I got type 1 diabetes then too, and I have no family history of it whatsoever. I just all of a sudden had it, and the doctors were surprised that I had no family history of it since it came so late.
A few months ago one night I started having to pee like literally every 15 minutes. This went on for hours, and then eventually I started getting terrible stomach pains and was crapping blood. Ended up going to the ER the next morning and they said I had colitis (inflammation of the colon.) I think it was all brought on by food poisoning.
A genetic predisposition certainly matters, but it's by no means a requirement. How did they find it? Did you go into DKA or something?
