Can You Get Diabetes From Eating Too Much Sugar?
Sugar is irresistible to most people. So irresistible, in fact, that sugar cravings might be rooted in evolution. Craving sugary foods, or so the theory goes, could help prevent starvation. In a modern world, however, where food is often plentiful, sugar consumption is linked to diabetes, obesity, and other health problems. Research into the connection between sugar consumption and diabetes is ongoing. Most doctors argue that sugar alone does not trigger diabetes. But some emerging research suggests a closer link between sugar consumption and diabetes than was previously thought. Can people get diabetes from eating too much sugar? Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes affect the body's ability to regulate blood glucose levels. But eating sugar will not cause type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition, which causes the body to attack cells that produce insulin. Damage to these cells undermines the body's ability to manage blood glucose. Type 2 diabetes is more complex. Sugar consumption will not directly cause diabetes. However, excess sugar consumption can cause weight gain. Obesity increases the risk of diabetes. Once a person has diabetes, eating too much sugar can make symptoms worse, since diabetes makes it more difficult for the body to manage blood sugar levels. Understanding the link between sugar and diabetes Although eating sugar is not directly linked to developing diabetes, some evidence suggests that increased overall availability of sugar makes diabetes more common. A 2013 study that looked at 175 different countries found that more sugar in the food supply increased diabetes rates. Specifically, for every additional 150 calories of sugar available per day per person, diabetes levels rose 1 percent. This change continued even when researchers con Continue reading >>
15 Terrible Things That Happen If You Eat Too Much Sugar
David Paul Morris / Getty Images How much sugar is too much sugar? Even one pack of M&M's may be more than you should eat in a day, newly drafted guidelines from the World Health Organization suggest. The WHO used to recommend that you get no more than 10% of your daily calories from sugar, but now they're considering lowering that to 5%. For an average, healthy adult, that would mean 25 grams, or about six teaspoons of sugar per day. (That's a little less than what you'd get from 10 Hershey's Kisses. A single can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar.) A teaspoon of sugar in your coffee or a half cup of ice cream won't kill you — all things in moderation — but the average sugar intake in the U.S. is 22 teaspoons per person per day. That's almost four times as much as the WHO's new guidelines suggest is healthy. People have been sounding warnings about the dangers of too much sugar for a long time. As early as 1957, John Yudkin, a professor of nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College in London, began arguing that when it came to heart disease and other chronic ailments, sugar — not fat — was the culprit. So what happens if you eat too much sugar? Here's a depressing rundown. 1. Cavities Trust your dentist on this one: Sugar is such an enemy to dental health that one study way back in 1967 called it the "arch criminal" behind cavities. The connection between sugar and cavities is perhaps the best established. "Tooth decay occurs when the bacteria that line the teeth feed on simple sugars, creating acid that destroys enamel," Anahad O'Connor explains at The New York Times. Because acid is a key culprit, sour candies are especially nefarious. Source: Journal of the American Dental Association, 2009; ISRN Dentistry, 2013; International Dental Journal, 2013 2. Insatiable hunger Continue reading >>
Q: Can Eating A Lot Of Sugar Give You Diabetes?
A: Not specifically. But too much of any unhealthy food can make you fat, which can cause diabetes. Our expert: Prof Ian Caterson It's a warning that rings harshly in the ear of anyone with a sweet tooth. You're about to tuck into a bag of your favourite lollies when someone shrieks in horror: "Don't eat those! You'll get diabetes!!" But do high-sugar foods really pose this risk? It's true that diabetes is a disease where there's too much glucose — a type of sugar — in your blood. But just because you have high blood sugar doesn't mean eating a lot of sugar is what got you there, says Ian Caterson, Boden Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney. In fact, the notion there's a direct link between eating sugar and developing diabetes is a myth, Caterson says. However, eating too many sugary foods can lead to weight gain, a key trigger for the most common form of diabetes: type 2. But so can eating too much of many other unhealthy foods, not just those high in sugar. "It is more being overweight — particularly around the waist — that is linked with type 2 diabetes than any particular food you eat," he says. Body fat and insulin Weight gain can lead to diabetes because extra body fat causes chemical changes in your body. "We used to think fat was just a storage tissue but we now know it's more than that," Caterson says. It's an active tissue which produces hormones — chemical messengers that influence processes in the body, he says. In particular, hormones produced by fat influence the activity of another hormone, insulin, which controls the uptake of glucose from your blood. Glucose is the body's main source of energy and it comes from carbohydrates such as potatoes, bread, pasta and rice, fruit and milk. After food is digested, the glucose is rele Continue reading >>
Can You Develop Diabetes By Eating Too Much Sugar, But Not Being Overweight?
You are talking about Type 2 Diabetes. The answer is no. A lot of popular information claims that long term excessive consumption of sugar correlates strongly with the occurrence of T2 Diabetes, but correlation is not causation. The tricky thing about your question is that consuming vast quantities of sugar are almost guaranteed to cause obesity over time. Obesity does have a causative role in T2 diabetes. Official sources who insist on the sugar-causation; well, follow the money. Dr. McDougall MD has been successfully treating this condition for something like 40 years. He has abundant evidence to support his beliefs on health and diet. Continue reading >>
Does Eating Too Much Sugar Give You Diabetes? I Actually Do Work Out And Eat Healthy For The Most Part But I'm Wondering Because I Eat A Lot Of Sugar
Eating too much sugar causes diabetes. False: Type 1 diabetes happens when the cells in the pancreas(pronounced: PAN-kree-us) that make insulin (pronounced: IN-suh-lin) are destroyed. This process isn't related to how much sugar a person eats. With type 2 diabetes, the body can't respond to insulin normally. The tendency to get type 2 diabetes is mostly inherited. That means it's linked to the genes people get from their parents. Still, eating too much sugar (or foods with sugar, like candy or regular soda) can cause weight gain, and weight gain can increase a person's risk for developing the disease. Some newer research studies suggest that eating more sugar might increase a person's risk for getting type 2 diabetes, even without extra weight gain. This hasn't been completely proven to be true yet. People with diabetes can never eat sweets. False: You can have your cake and eat it too, just not the whole cake! People with diabetes need to control the total amount of carbohydrates (pronounced: kar-bo-HI-drates) in their diet, and sugary treats count as carbs. But this doesn't mean that they can't have any sweets. It just means that they should put the brakes on eating too many sweets and other high-calorie foods that are low in nutrients (like vitamins and minerals we all need). Eating too many of these foods also can make it less likely you'll want to eat healthier foods. People can outgrow diabetes. False: People don't grow out of their diabetes. In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas stops making insulin and won't make it again. People with type 1 diabetes will always need to take insulin, at least until scientists find a cure for diabetes. People with type 2 diabetes may find it easier to control blood sugar levels if they make healthy changes to their lives, like eating Continue reading >>
If I Have Diabetes, Will I Have To Stop Eating Sugar?
What is that saying? Everything is good but only in moderation? Well this rings true when it comes to eating sugar with diabetes too. You probably already know that eating a lot of sugar is not great for your body. The problem is that sugar comes in a natural form and in an added form, so sometimes you have no idea that you are consuming it. Also, it is in many foods that you don’t even think to consider. Foods that you think are healthy, such as tomato sauce and protein bars, are packed full of sugar. This article breaks down the facts about eating sugar with diabetes and how you can make the best choices for your body in order to effectively manage your diabetes. How does sugar impact the blood sugar levels? Normally, when you eat something that contains sugar, your pancreas releases insulin. This insulin partners up with the sugar molecules and together they enter into the cells and provide energy to your body. When you have diabetes, your body either isn’t making enough insulin anymore, or your body is resistant to the insulin that you are creating. This prevents the sugar from being used by your cells and it just hangs out in your bloodstream causing high blood sugar levels. Having sugar in your bloodstream can lead to many problems and is dangerous for your health. Sugar, which is also known as carbohydrates or glucose, is found naturally in many different foods such as dairy, fruits, and starchy vegetables. It is also added to many foods like pastas, grains, baked goods, processed foods, and beverages. Since liquids are digested faster, they increase your blood sugar faster than solids do. More about what contains sugar is found later in this article. The myth about sugar and diabetes There are many myths about diabetes in general. One of the biggest ones is Continue reading >>
Myth: Sugar Causes Diabetes
We all know the stereotype – if you’ve got diabetes, you must have eaten too much sugar. But, with this sweet ingredient found in so much of our food – and, recently, so many of our newspapers – what’s the truth about sugar? And how does it affect diabetes? What is sugar? Sugar is found naturally in fruit, vegetables and dairy foods. It’s also added to food and drink by food manufacturers, or by ourselves at home. The debate about sugar and health is mainly around the ‘added sugars’. This includes: table sugar that we add to our hot drinks or breakfast cereal caster sugar, used in baking sugars hidden in sauces, ready meals, cakes and drinks. Does sugar cause diabetes? There are two main types of diabetes – Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the insulin producing cells in your pancreas are destroyed by your immune system. No amount of sugar in your diet – or anything in your lifestyle – has caused or can cause you to get Type 1 diabetes. With Type 2 diabetes, though we know sugar doesn’t directly causes Type 2 diabetes, you are more likely to get it if you are overweight. You gain weight when you take in more calories than your body needs, and sugary foods and drinks contain a lot of calories. And it's important to add that fatty foods and drinks are playing a part in our nation's expanding waistline. So you can see if too much sugar is making you put on weight, then you are increasing your risk of getting Type 2 diabetes. But Type 2 diabetes is complex, and sugar is unlikely to be the only reason the condition develops. If I have diabetes, can I eat sugar? Having diabetes doesn’t mean you have to cut sugar out of your diet completely. We all enjoy eating sugary foods occasionally, and there’s no problem including them as a treat Continue reading >>
Diabetes: What's True And False?
en espaolLa diabetes: Qu es cierto y qu es falso? If you're like most people with diabetes, you'll get all kinds of advice about it from friends and family or online. Some of this information is wrong. Here's the truth about some of the common things you might hear. Does eating too much sugar cause diabetes? No. Type 1 diabetes happens when cells in the pancreas that make insulin are destroyed. This happens because something goes wrong with the body's immune system . It has nothing to do with how much sugar a person eats. Sugar doesn't cause diabetes. But there is one way that sugar can influence whether a person gets type 2 diabetes. Consuming too much sugar (or sugary foods and drinks) can make people put on weight. Gaining too much weight leads to type 2 diabetes in some people. Of course, eating too much sugar isn't the only cause of weight gain. Weight gain from eating too much of any food can make a person's chance of getting diabetes greater. Yes! You can have your cake and eat it too, just not the whole cake! Like everyone, people with diabetes should put the brakes on eating too many sweets. But you can still enjoy them sometimes. People with type 1 diabetes don't grow out of it. With type 1 diabetes, the pancreas stops making insulin and won't make it again. People with type 1 diabetes will always need to take insulin, at least until scientists find a cure. People with type 2 diabetes will always have a tendency to get high blood sugar levels. But if they take steps to live a healthier life, it can sometimes lower their blood sugar. If people eat healthy foods and exercise enough to get their blood sugar levels back on track, doctors might say they can stop taking insulin or other medicines. Can you catch diabetes from a person who has it? No. Diabetes is not Continue reading >>
Can Eating Too Much Sugar Cause Type 2 Diabetes?
Olivia Yang was stunned when she learned she had type 2 diabetes six years ago, when she was 19. Her doctor was shocked, too. In fact, her physician tested her twice to be sure there wasn’t some mistake. Yang was young, had a normal weight for her 5-foot-2-inch frame, and didn’t consider herself a particularly bad eater. She certainly didn’t seem like someone at risk. Now a new study may hint at why some patients end up with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes even when they don’t appear to have all of the typical risk factors such as age, obesity, and an unhealthy diet. Yang learned of her condition sophomore year of college. She’d gone for a physical — a requirement in order to begin working out with a fitness trainer — but her A1C blood test came back abnormally high, indicating diabetes. An A1C test tells a person’s average blood sugar level over the past few months. More specifically, an A1C test measures what percentage of your hemoglobin — a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen — is coated with sugar. It’s used to diagnose type 1 and type 2 diabetes and to keep tabs on how a person is managing their condition over time. Normal readings land below 5.7 percent. The range for someone with prediabetes falls between 5.7 and 6.4 percent and indicates a high risk of developing diabetes. Anything higher is considered diabetes. Unexpected diagnosis Yang, now 25 and an account executive at an advertising agency in Boston, told CBS News, “It was a shock for me. Type 2 runs in my family. But it happened when my parents were older so it was kind of a shock that I would get it at such a young age.” After the diagnosis, though, she realized she’d had symptoms for a while. “Looking back, I fell asleep a lot. I was tired a lot after I ate, a sym Continue reading >>
Can Eating Too Much Sugar Cause Type 2 Diabetes?
Because type 2 diabetes is linked to high levels of sugar in the blood, it may seem logical to assume that eating too much sugar is the cause of the disease. But of course, it’s not that simple. “This has been around for years, this idea that eating too much sugar causes diabetes — but the truth is, type 2 diabetes is a multifactorial disease with many different types of causes,” says Lynn Grieger, RDN, CDE, a nutrition coach in Prescott, Arizona, and a medical reviewer for Everyday Health. “Type 2 diabetes is really complex.” That said, some research does suggest that eating too many sweetened foods can affect type 2 diabetes risk, and with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that 30.3 million Americans have the disease — and that millions of more individuals are projected to develop it, too — understanding all the risk factors for the disease, including sugar consumption, is essential to help reverse the diabetes epidemic. The Sugar and Type 2 Diabetes Story: Not So Sweet After the suspicion that sugar was the cause of diabetes, the scientific community pointed its finger at carbohydrates. That makes sense, notes Grieger, explaining that simple and complex carbohydrates are both metabolized as sugar, leading blood sugar levels to fluctuate. Yet carbs are processed differently in the body based on their type: While simple carbs are digested and metabolized quickly, complex carbs take longer to go through this system, resulting in more stable blood sugar. “It comes down to their chemical forms: A simple carbohydrate has a simpler chemical makeup, so it doesn’t take as much for it to be digested, whereas the complex ones take a little longer,” Grieger explains. Sources of complex carbohydrates include whole-wheat bread an Continue reading >>
'eating Too Much Sugar Causes Diabetes'
Many people believe that eating too much sugar causes diabetes. The belief that eating too much sugar causes diabetes is one of the most common misconceptions around diabetes , and has been declared untrue by the American Diabetes Association and many other scientific bodies. There are three main types of diabetes. None of them are caused by too much sugar, but rather by the pancreas which does not work as it should. Sugar is a natural nutrient needed by the body to produce energy and derived from different types of carbohydrates (including sugar, fruit, vegetables, grains and starches). In a healthy body the pancreas produces a hormone called insulin which helps to deliver the sugar (or glucose) to your cells, providing your body with energy. When a person develops diabetes, the pancreas stops producing enough insulin, resulting in the glucose building up in the blood instead of moving into the cells. Type 1 diabetes occurs when the pancreas cannot make insulin. It is caused by genetics and unknown factors that trigger the onset of the disease, and mostly affects children and younger people (before the age of 40). Patients are required to take insulin for the rest of their lives. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas does not make enough insulin, the insulin does not work properly, or both. It is caused by genetics and lifestyle factors and can happen in a person of any age. Eating a diet high in kilojoules, whether from fat or sugar, can cause you to become overweight which increases your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. A third type of diabetes, gestational diabetes, occurs during pregnancy when hormone changes prevent insulin from working properly. Women with gestational diabetes usually need to take insulin and the condition may resolve after birth of the ch Continue reading >>
Does Eating Too Much Sugar Cause Diabetes?
You’ve heard the joke a million times. And with Christmas around the corner, you’re bound to hear it a whole lot more: “With all those sweets, you’re going to give us all diabetes!” It’s funny, but most people do assume there’s at least a hint of truth to it. Is eating sweets today going to give me diabetes tomorrow? We all know diabetes is linked to high levels of blood sugar, so it may seem logical to assume that overdosing on the sweet stuff is why so many people are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. But of course, it’s not that simple. Diabetes, By The Numbers Diabetes does not have one cause, per se. It happens when your body is not able to make enough insulin or effectively use the insulin it has. This can happen for a couple of different reasons. In people with type 1 diabetes, the immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Without insulin, the body isn’t able to use glucose as fuel, and blood sugars rise to dangerous levels. For people with type 2 diabetes, muscle and other cells stop responding to insulin. Without insulin telling the cells to let glucose in, blood sugars remain high and cells aren’t able to get the fuel they need to function properly. The Things you Can Control Of course, type 1 diabetes is due to factors we can’t control, like our genes and some viruses. Type 2 diabetes, on the other hand, is due to a mix of things we can and can’t control. While we can’t do anything about our genes, our age or our ethnicity, we can control our weight, our diet and how physically active we are. Now to the sugar: Although excessive sugar intake is not a direct cause of type 2 diabetes, excess calories lead to weight gain, which increases your diabetes risk. And since added sugars are one of the largest sources of Continue reading >>
Q: Can Eating Too Much Sugar Cause Diabetes?
Q: Can eating too much sugar cause diabetes? Not in the same smoking-gun way that cigarettes cause cancer, but research shows that sugar may play a part--and it's smart to limit your intake. First and foremost, being overweight does increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and consuming too much sugar (especially when coupled with little to no physical activity) can contribute to weight gain. Excess body fat seems to trigger the release of certain proteins from fat cells that mess with the secretion of insulin (a hormone that metabolizes blood sugar and keeps it at healthy levels), according to a 2009 Cell Metabolism study. This may eventually overwork the pancreas and increase blood sugar, leading to type 2 diabetes. But some emerging research suggests that excess sugar intake can increase diabetes risk regardless of weight. A landmark JAMA study found that women nearly doubled their diabetes risk when they increased the number of sugar-added drinks they consumed from 1 or fewer a week to 1 or more per day over a 4-year period. Rapidly absorbed sugars--like those in colas--may damage the pancreas cells that secrete insulin. In contrast, real-fruit drinks were not associated with increased diabetes risk, perhaps because of the other nutrients absorbed along with the sugar. Bottom line: To be safe, keep your weight at a healthy level; eat plenty of high-fiber foods (like veggies and whole grains), which keep blood sugar and insulin levels steady; and choose water or tea instead of sugary soft drinks whenever possible. --Stephanie Woodard Source: Frank B. Hu, MD, PhD, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health Continue reading >>
Can Consuming Too Much Sugar Cause Diabetes?
Independently of quantity, consuming sugar (i.e., sucrose) does not cause diabetes. Understand why: “Since the first doctor noticed, hundreds of years ago, that the urine of a diabetic patient tasted sweet, it has been common to call the condition the sugar disease, or sugar diabetes, and since nothing was known about physiological chemistry, it was commonly believed that eating too much sugar had to be the cause, since the ability of the body to convert the protein in tissues into sugar wasn’t discovered until 1848, by Claude Bernard (who realized that diabetics lost more sugar than they took in). Even though patients continued to pass sugar in their urine until they died, despite the elimination of sugar from their diet, medical policy required that they be restrained to keep them from eating sugar. That prescientific medical belief, that eating sugar causes diabetes, is still held by a very large number, probably the majority, of physicians.” “In an earlier newsletter, I wrote about P. A. Piorry in Paris, in 1864, and Dr. William Budd in England, in 1867, who treated diabetes by adding a large amount of ordinary sugar, sucrose, to the patient's diet. Glucose was known to be the sugar appearing in the diabetics' urine, but sucrose consists of half glucose, and half fructose. In 1874, E. Kulz in Germany reported that diabetics could assimilate fructose better than glucose. In the next decades there were several more reports on the benefits of feeding fructose, including the reduction of glucose in the urine. With the discovery of insulin in 1922, fructose therapy was practically forgotten, until the 1950s when new manufacturing techniques began to make it economical to use.” “On a normal diet, his weight was 152 pounds, and his metabolic rate was from 9% to Continue reading >>
Does Sugar Cause Diabetes?
The recent film What the Health raised the question as to whether sugar or other carbohydrates cause diabetes. The notion is understandable. Blood sugar levels are high in diabetes, so a common idea has held that eating sugar somehow triggers the disease process. However, the major diabetes organizations take a different view. The American Diabetes Association1 and Diabetes UK2 have labelled this notion a “myth,” as has the Joslin Diabetes Center,3 which wrote, “Diabetes is not caused by eating too much sugar.” These and other organizations have worked to educate people about the causes of diabetes and the role that foods play in the disease process. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Type 2 diabetes—the most common form of the disease—is caused by insulin resistance and pancreatic failure. Here is what you need to know: Sugar Is the Body’s Fuel The human body runs on glucose, a simple sugar. Just as gasoline powers your car, glucose powers your muscles, your brain, and the rest of your body. Glucose comes from fruit and from starchy foods, such as grains, beans, and potatoes, and your body can also produce it when needed. Without it you would die. Diabetes means having higher-than-normal blood glucose values. It comes in three common forms: Type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, usually through an autoimmune process. The triggers for this process are under investigation and may include dairy proteins, viruses, or other factors. Type 2 diabetes typically starts with insulin resistance. That is, the cells of the body resist insulin’s efforts to escort glucose into the cells. What causes insulin resistance? It appears to be caused by an accumulation of microscopic fat particles within muscle and Continue reading >>
