UNDERSTANDING DIABETES
To understand diabetes, you need to understand the role of
blood sugar. Blood sugar is another term for glucose, the body’s preferred source
of energy. The food we eat gets broken down into glucose, transported through
the bloodstream, and taken into the cells, with the help from an essential hormone
called insulin. Insulin is produced by the beta cells in our pancreas, and its primary
function is to activate insulin receptors in the cells, which allows the glucose
to enter the cells from the blood stream, which then is broken down into energy.
Diabetes refers to a condition in which blood sugar cannot get into the cells and
as a result starts to build up in the bloodstream.
Neal Barnard, MD, offers a help analogy for diabetes.
Imagine the cells in our body are little houses with doors that need to be
opened to let the visiting glucose in. The job of insulin is to act as a key to
open those doors and let the glucose into the cell, where it can be turned into
energy the body can use. This process can go wrong in two ways. In some cases,
there is no insulin or key to open the door, so the glucose gets stuck outside-
this is known as type 1 diabetes, which usually occurs in childhood.
In second problematic scenario, which is much more common,
the insulin or key is present but it is unable to open the door. It is as if
the lock has somehow become jammed and the key no longer works. This is the
condition known as insulin resistance, which leads to type 2 diabetes, where
glucose builds up in the blood stream. In this setting the body is actually
tries to make more insulin in an effort to get that door open, but the lock is
jammed so none of the keys work. It typically occurs in adulthood, often
developing slowly and is closely correlated with a high fat diet and weight
gain.
reference
Whole food diet
John Mackey
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