Is Sugar Really a Direct Cause of Diabetes?
When talking about health, a lot of people start with inquiring about your diet. “Do you consume the three whites a lot? You know, flour, salt, and sugar.” We all know that they are not healthy, but can sugar actually cause diabetes? To get an answer to that question, we need to ask ourselves: What is diabetes in the first place?
Short answer: it is a chronic illness. For the long answer, we should take a look at a hormone inside our body called “insulin”. Insulin is a hormone that works just like a key. When we eat food, it is broken down into glucose, a type of simple sugar that can circulate in our bloodstream. With the help of the bloodstream, it is transported into cells all around the body that need glucose to produce energy. However, glucose alone cannot enter cells because of its size and polarity. To help glucose while entering cells, insulin works like a key to opening a path into cells. Therefore, a lack of insulin would mean that glucose would be unable to enter the cell and leave the cell without a source to create energy with. Moreover, it would mean that the glucose that could not enter the cell would continue to stay in the bloodstream, causing various problems in blood vessels as well as internal organs. Thus, when the body cannot produce or utilize its insulin, we call that illness “diabetes.”
Diabetes has two types: type 1 and type 2. Type 1 is caused when your immune system mistakes itself as dangerous and starts attacking cells in the pancreas that make insulin, which are called beta cells. Type 1 can be caused by transferred genes from parents. On the other hand, type 2 diabetes occurs because of insulin resistance, when your body does not respond to insulin, the way it is supposed to, more and more insulin is needed to release a certain amount of glucose. Thus, the insulin that your body generates cannot catch up with your blood sugar.
The type that concerns our topic is type 2 since it is often associated with insulin resistance. However, the cause of insulin resistance can be associated with your lifestyle, instead of just your diet. For example, the amount of physical exercise you do affects insulin resistance as well. Therefore, the answer to our main question is no, sugar cannot directly cause diabetes, although consuming lots of it can aggravate the situation to some degree.
Consuming lots of sugar is not a direct cause of type 2 diabetes. However, we know that high sugar consumption is correlated with diabetes. Of course, this does not mean that we should avoid eating anything sugary at all times. What we can do is, not overdo our sugar consumption on a regular basis.
Work Cited
https://byjus.com/chemistry/polarity/
https://www.britannica.com/science/polarity-chemistry
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/what-is-type-1-diabetes.html
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/type2.html
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-sugar-cause-diabetes
