• Question: why carnt people with diabeteies eat too much suger

    Asked by cherry16 to Amar, Matt on 21 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      Hi Cherry, there are two different types of diabetes but in both people can’t eat much sugar.

      In healthy people, when you eat sugar it gets digested and goes into your blood. From there it can be used to make energy, but a lot of it is converted and stored for later – too much sugar in your blood makes it thick and heavy. If you have a high level of sugar in your blood for too long it can cause long term damage to your eyes, your heart and damage your feet as the blood cannot be pumped properly.

      Special cells in your pancreas sense the amount of sugar and make a hormone, insulin, which allows makes other organs store the sugar. In type 1 diabetes, people cannot make insulin. They can take insulin tablets or injections. The other type of diabetes, type 2, is different. People can sense the sugar and make insulin but the organs cannot store the sugar.

    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      People with type-1 diabetes aren’t able to produce a hormone called insulin which tells your body to remove the sugar from your blood stream and put it in fatty tissue for use later as energy. These people are often born with this problem and so can’t eat too much sugar because their blood sugar levels will get too high (due to the fact that there is no insulin telling their body to remove it). Too much sugar in your blood is called ‘hyper-glycemia’ (literally means ‘lots of sugar’) which can be life threatening if not treated.

      Type-2 diabetes is a little bit different but has the same outcome. People with Type2 diabetes have developed a resistance to insulin (rather than not making it). This can be caused by eating too much sugar which causes so much insulin to be made by your body that it no longer works and sugar remains in the blood stream.

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