Sugar and Diabetes
May 18, 2005
I've already commented on this post, but I want to expand upon it further.
One of the huge misconceptions is that sugar leads to diabetes. It doesn't.
Type 1 diabetes is known to be an autoimmune problem. Ingesting sugar has nothing to do with getting diabetes, or even preventing complications. What you have to control is the amount of sugar that is in the blood stream. While sugar itself metabolises to sugar in the blood stream so does any other carbohydrate, and so does protein, but at a much slower and lesser rate.
Type 2 is believed to be linked to obesity, but that again doesn't mean that consuming sugar leads to diabetes. It doesn't mean that all obese people are going to become diabetes, and it does not mean that non-obese people will not become diabetes.
I believe that any press in the news that ignores the cause and effect factors, or exagerates cause and effect factors is doing harm. I've blogged on this in the past, and so have the other diabetes bloggers.
There are many ways in which the popular press is harming diabetics. First, the more that an obese person is pushed to lose weight, the harder it can be for them to do it. It becomes even harder when that person has uncontrolled blood sugar, because uncontrolled blood sugar causes them. It's a weird mechanism, but what is happening, when the body doesn't get enough insulin, the body isn't getting enough fuel, and as a result, the body is literally starving. In fact, sudden, rapid weight loss is a sympthom of diabetes.
Anything that can get in the way of good glycemic control, and that includes mental attitudes is harmful to the diabetic, no matter the cause.