Why We Get Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetic Neuropathy I’ll try to explain to Cathy, but I’m going to walk everyone through why people get Type 2 diabetes. And one of the first things you’re going to see is when we eat too many processed foods, too much sugar, too many sugary drinks, what happens is that sugar gets absorbed into your blood stream. It’s okay, except when you’re eating too much of the that. What your pancreas does is it secretes insulin. And I want to explain something really quickly. Insulin has receptors in your cell wall, which then tell that cell to absorb glucose. No problem, working. But after a lifetime of inactivity, too much glucose in your bloodstream, what happens is you’re pancreas will secrete insulin still, but your cells literally become impervious to it. So the glucose bounces off the cell, it doesn’t go into your cells and it stays in your bloodstream which -- the problem it affects everything in your body -- your heart, your kidneys, your heart literally -- the artery supplying your heart will overtime become destroyed as gunk fills up, the cholesterol builds up, leading to chances of a heart attack. But it’s not just your heart blood vessels. It’s the blood vessels that actually go all the way down to your legs. And again, why is that a big deal? I want to show you. This is what I see in you all the time. This is a diabetic foot complication, oftentimes what this will lead to in a diabetic patient is amputation -- sometime, multiple amputations. We don’t want that. So let’s go back to blood vessels. They supply your heart, your legs, well what else do they supply? Your eyes. Those tiny blood vessels in your eye can be affected by diabetes and I want to explain what that would look like to someone with diabetic retinopathy, normal vision -- diabetic vision. So Cathy, one of the things I want to emphasize is you want to take control of your diabetes of pre-diabetes before you get to these complications.