On a recent blog post, Jerry Naughton has some good facts regarding diabetes:
- Type 2 Diabetes is a "burning out" of the pancreas' ability to produce insulin, the powerful hormone that keeps the body’s blood sugar in a very narrow range - so you don't die.
- Insulin works by forcing your muscles to burn blood sugar first while pushing other nutrients into your fat cells until the sugar is dealt with.
- If you continuously bombard your system with sugar, your muscles can eventually become "resistant" to insulin's signals and will not uptake the sugar.
- At that point your body will convert the sugar to fat and store that in your fats cells, too, because insulin's immediate concern is keeping you from sugar-stroking, not how you’ll look in a swimsuit this summer.
- Since insulin is still present, your fat cells won’t release fat for your body to burn as energy. So you’ll tend to eat more while remaining hungry and tired because you’re starving at the cellular level.
- Carbohydrates are sugar. Even the hearthealthywholegrain kind (yeah, it’s pretty much officially one word now).
- Fat does not affect blood sugar.