The Street Articles

By Jenna Miles, Mom, Dietitian, Author, Bitch. According to the best-quality research we currently have access to, eating sugar and carbohydrate does not directly cause diabetes. Type 1 diabetes, which used to be called juvenile diabetes but can actually occur at any age, is caused by the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. Insulin is like that key that unlocks your body’s cells, allowing blood glucose (a.k.a. blood sugar) to come inside. The cell then uses that blood glucose as fuel to do the work it needs to do, kind of like a car uses gasoline for fuel. So in type 1 diabetes, if you don’t have any insulin, blood glucose is unable to enter your body’s cells. The type 1 diabetic must take insulin in order to allow blood glucose to enter the body’s cells. Otherwise, blood glucose piles up in the bloodstream, rapidly leading to diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), coma, and death. Type 2 diabetes happens for a different reason known as insulin r...