Do You Really Have Type 2 Diabetes? By Decadent Bitch, RN Have you been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes or Pre-Diabetes AND you’re lean? Maybe you’re a serious runner and eat a healthy diet? You need to keep reading, because you may actually be “Type 1.5” or LADA. LADA stands for Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adults and is really Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (DM), but it’s onset is different. When you think of a Type 1 diabetic, you think of a kid who went from being normal to requiring insulin for survival over a very short period of time, such as days. The reality, on the other hand, is that there are plenty of adults who become Type 1 diabetics later on in life. According to a large European study, approximately 10% of those who are diagnosed with Type 2 DM are actually misdiagnosed, and should be diagnosed with LADA (1) . First, let’s break down the difference between Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 is characterized by the autoimmune destruction...