What Causes Diabetes

Learn What Causes Diabetes to Help Avoid It

Before we tackle what causes diabetes, let's revisit our simple definition: diabetes is a disease in which the body either does not produce or cannot properly use insulin.

In a normally functioning body, food is digested and broken down into (among other nutrients) glucose or sugar. When I say "sugar" don't think of the white stuff sitting on your kitchen table, but rather think of "glucose," something good that every cell in your body must have to function properly.

So, to deal with this good sugar/glucose, the pancreas secretes the hormone insulin. Insulin's job is to unlock or open the body's cells to be able to receive and use their food -- glucose.

The problem occurs when our cells no longer accept insulin as a key and their doors remain locked and glucose is shut-out, doomed to float around in the blood stream unused by the cells that desperately need it. This phenomenon is called insulin resistance and is the first stages of type 2 diabetes.

So, now we can go back to our "what causes diabetes" question by looking at what causes insulin resistance.

Drum roll please...

Obesity is the major contributing factor to the loss of sensitivity to insulin!

Approximately 80-90% of individuals with type 2 diabetes are obese (which just means 20% or more above their recommended weight). If these people were not obese, they most likely would not have ever developed diabetes.

Such a bold statement, I know! Let me back it up.

Excess body fat contributes to diabetes in a very direct way. When fat cells, particularly those around the mid-section of the body, become full of fat, they secrete a number of biological products (such as leptin, resistin, tumor necrosis factor etc).

These products dampen the effect of insulin, or to stay with our lock and key analogy it's like they file down the points and ridges of the insulin "key" until they don't work anymore. These same products also go in and tell your pancreas not to release as much insulin while at the same time coaxing your liver into producing more glucose!

Not only do increased fat cells produce substances that are bad for insulin function, they impede the production of substances good for insulin function. For example, the protein adiponectin.

This friendly little protein is associated with improving insulin sensitivity. It helps reduce inflammation and lower triglicerides. It also blocks hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) -- and fat tries to make it hard for this protein to live.

All of these things working against you is bad, but it doesn't result in diabetes over night. Your pancreas is a fighter and is often able to produce insulin despite the obstacles we give it to overcome. But even a powerful pancreas will give out eventually and complete failure to output insulin occurs.

So now we've answered our what causes diabetes question by covering both parts of our simple diabetes definition: a disease in which the body either does not produce (pancreas failure) or cannot properly use (insulin resistance) insulin.

So now that we know what causes diabetes, what are the symptoms of diabetes?

Take this diabetes symptoms quiz for a quick and easy way to determine your risk.

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