OnePhatMan

Deep inside your body, behind your stomach, sits a small organ called the pancreas. If you’re like most people, you don’t think too much about this tiny guy, but he’s very important to your health and well-being. The pancreas contains a group of cells called islet cells that produce a hormone called insulin. Insulin’s role in the body is to bind sugar molecules in the blood to receptors on cells, to provide energy to them. If your pancreas doesn’t produce enough of this hormone, or if your body can’t effectively use the insulin it produces (more on this in a minute), you—along with almost 20 million other Americans—have a disease called diabetes mellitus.

There are two predominant types of diabetes mellitus. Type I, sometimes called “juvenile diabetes” because it’s often diagnosed in children, is caused by a pancreas that for unknown reasons (though genetics is thought to play a big part) doesn’t produce enough insulin for the body to use. Because their bodies don’t produce insulin, Type I diabetics have to have insulin, usually in the form of daily shots, to live.

The more common form of diabetes, Type II (or “adult onset”), occurs when a body produces enough insulin, but doesn’t use it or uses it ineffectively. This form of diabetes is also known as insulin resistance, and I had it for several years. Though a few Type II diabetics need to take insulin shots like Type I diabetics, most can treat their disease through medications (when I was a Type II diabetic, before I got my weight under control, I was on two different kinds of medication, Avandia and Glucophage) or through keeping an eye on what they eat. Treatments depend on the severity of the disease.

The most common symptoms of diabetes are excess thirst (polydipsia) and excessive urination (polyuria). These symptoms are brought about by a dangerous internal state called ketoacidosis, wherein the body is burning fat for fuel instead of glucose (because it can’t use the glucose in the blood) and the acids produced by the fat breakdown are upsetting the body’s delicate balance. The day before I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 1997, I drank three gallons of sweetened tea.

While Type II diabetes can be caused by genetic factors, often (and certainly in my case) it’s brought on by a sedentary lifestyle and too much bodyfat. While the exact relationship between obesity and Type II has been unknown until recently, recent research has tied the two together via a fat-secreted protein. In other words, the more fat you have, the more of this protein you have, and the more likely you are to develop Type II diabetes. Logically, it would follow that by lowering the amount of fat in your body, you may be able to lower the amount of excess sugar in your blood.

Why is excess sugar in the blood—high blood sugar—so bad?

At the atomic level, sugar molecules are like tiny shards of glass in the blood, ready to destroy tiny veins and capillaries when it stays at excessive levels, as in untreated diabetics. After years of elevated blood sugar levels, diabetics start to suffer some pretty horrific complications. Because the veins comprising the retina are so delicate, vision starts to go. Capillaries in the extremities are destroyed, which can lead to necrosis and amputations. Nerve damage from high blood sugar can occur, causing tingling, pain, and even a total loss of sensation in the extremities (often the feet). This decreased sensation, called diabetic neuropathy makes it harder to detect when you’ve been injured, and that, coupled with the fact that sugary blood helps infections thrive, can make even the tiniest cut dangerous to a diabetic.

And those are just a few of the complications.

Normally, blood sugar levels in humans run between 70-110 mg/dl (70-110 milligrams of blood glucose per deciliter of blood), but in diabetics this goes much higher. For example, the day I was diagnosed my blood sugar was 403 mg/dl. People with a blood sugar of 500 mg/dl or higher are in danger of going into a coma or even dying. If you think you have diabetes, go see a doctor. It’s not a laughing matter or something to put off; your life could literally depend on it. Take it from someone who’s had it. It’s not a fun thing.

There’s good news for many people with Type II diabetes, though. Very often, especially if you’re overweight, you can drastically affect your blood sugar levels by simply dropping the excess weight and getting into shape. It’s entirely possible that if you’re on medication for diabetes, you’ll be able to come off it (though you probably want to talk to your doctor about it first) or reduce the amount you take. A little common sense goes a long way. If you’re like me, getting rid of the weight may actually get rid of your disease (each person’s different, so don’t take my word on that as gold). No matter how much sweet stuff I eat on junk food day now, I can’t get my blood sugar to go higher than normal, because I got my weight and fitness under control. When my body became normal, all of it became normal.

I’m still working on my mind.

Because it’s so important, I want to say it again: if you think you may have diabetes—maybe you have close family members with it, or you seem to drink and pee all the time, or feel tired constantly—please go see your doctor. Diabetes is not something to ignore, or you may be regretting it too late.