Type 2 Diabetes – How Does Your Blood Become Affected by Sugar and Insulin?

It is common knowledge the effects of Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes show in the blood in some way. But many people, even some diabetics, are really not exactly sure what the connection is between diabetes and the blood. While they know eating sugar or carbs that turn into sugar, affects them in a negative way they don’t really know why it affects them differently than it does everyone else.

Under normal conditions, there is a very small trace of sugar in your bloodstream… roughly one teaspoon throughout your entire body. This is why there is such a dramatic change to your sugar level when you eat a candy bar or a large slab of chocolate cake.

Every time you eat, regardless of what it is, your insulin level goes up. Your pancreas releases insulin in response to the intake of food. Foods high in fiber help control the speed and extent of the rise. Fiber actually slows down the absorption of other nutrients eaten at the same meal, including carbohydrates. Other foods, such as carbs, simple sugars and starches, catapult insulin levels rapidly. Insulin also spikes dramatically after a large meal or after that candy bar or piece of cake.

Insulin takes the sugar in your bloodstream and transports it throughout your body to the cells, wherever it is needed so it can be used for energy. The more active you are, the more a need exists.

When you eat a large meal or a lot of sugar, your body has to go into overdrive trying to find somewhere to dump all of the extra sugar that has just been ingested. As the sugar makes its way into your bloodstream, the beta cells of the pancreas, which manufacture the insulin, finds it needs to produce even more insulin in order to keep up with the high amount of blood sugar.

When your body’s cells no longer need sugar, but sugar is still available, it has to go somewhere. So your body does the only other thing it can with the remaining sugar… it stores it as fat. This is accomplished because of a production of triglycerides by the insulin.

But the development of triglycerides isn’t the only problem. Under normal conditions, leptin is released by your body and transported via your bloodstream to your brain to signal the body when it has had enough to eat. The triglycerides then interfere with leptin making its way to your brain. The result? Overeating.

This is one of the reasons so many overweight and obese individuals have Type 2 diabetes. It also shows maintaining a healthy diet and exercising regularly can lower your triglyceride levels and help to control, and sometimes even completely eliminate, Type 2 diabetes.