Can an improper diet cause diabetes?

[Acco40]

Or is someone just predisposed to get it.

Also, I know there are different types of diabetes as well. But the crux of my questioning revolves around the possible development of diabetes. If it is possible to develop it, what would cause this? How bad would my diet have to be? At what age, etc.,…

Thanks for the knowledge beforehand.

[Dr.Lao]

Type II diabetes can be caused by poor diet. Some 75 to 80% of people with type II diabetes are obese. Type II diabetes is characterized by insensitive insulin receptors in fat and muscle cells. The cells don’t get the message to abosorb glucose, so it stays in the blood stream. I’m not sure how poor diet can cause this (IANAD), but I believe it is linked to repeated spikes in blood glucose levels. Type II diabetes also has a strong genetic component and it runs in families. Native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics have an increased incidence of the disease.

[MsWhatsit]

I am currently pregnant, and because Type II diabetes and gestational diabetes both run in my family, my doctor has placed me on a diabetic diet as a precautionary measure. Essentially the diet limits your sugar intake and ensures that your blood sugar doesn’t spike throughout the day. It’s big on healthy snacks and eating breakfast. According to my doctor, if I follow the diet religiously, I stand a good chance of not actually developing gestational diabetes, although it’s not a 100% guarantee.

Type II can occur at pretty much any age. My grandmother developed it in her mid-20s, but my grandfather didn’t get it until he was in his 60s.

[voguevixen]

Here’s a link I found with some basics about the 3 kinds of diabetes, who is likely to get it, when symptoms are most likely to show up, etc.

WebMD - Better information. Better health.

…certain factors can increase one’s risk of developing diabetes. People who have family members with diabetes (especially type 2 diabetes ), who are overweight, or who are African American, Hispanic, or Native American are all at greater risk of developing diabetes.

Here’s a link to Dr. John McDougall’s Diabetes page. (Both he as well as Dr. Dean Ornish are well known for promoting a vegetarian diet for the cure of a myriad of ailments, with quite a bit of success and research to back them up. Interesting reading in any case.)

http://www.drmcdougall.com/science/diabetes.html

Both forms of diabetes, childhood and adult, are rare in parts of the world where people’s meals are based on starches. This rarity is easy to understand as far as adult-type diabetes is concerned, since the primary cause of that illness is the rich Western diet. Fat inhibits action of the body’s insulin, and the lack of fibers allows rapid passage of glucose from the gut into the blood at which point the blood sugar content rises rapidly. Carbohydrates surprisingly stimulate insulin activity, thereby lowering blood sugar levels, and making the diabetic feel better.

…

In Adult Diabetes: Change in diet will allow 75% of these patients to stop taking all insulin, and more than 95% to stop taking all diabetic pills.

[BarnStormer]

Eating sugar by the pound, as when you chomp down a whole bag of hard candy during a movie, is just asking for trouble. Any system in the body relies on counterbalances, and when you excede the limits to balance, you risk damage.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

Want to avoid diabetes? Eat a sensible low-fat diet, maintain ideal body weight, get aerobic exercise five times a week.

and voguevixen thanks for pointing out that eating sugar does not cause diabetes!

Qadgop, MD

[hedra]

Check out the glycemic index (GI) of your foods, too - GI indicates how much of a bloodsugar spike a food causes, compared to a straight hit of glucose. Eating starches over ‘richer’ foods won’t keep your bloodsugar from spiking, if you are eating white bread (which has a 100% matchup to straight glucose, as far as bloodsugar profile is concerned). And eating certain combinations can slow the bloodsugar spike, too, like eating high-acid foods, such as lemon juice and vinegar. It is a very wonderfully complex system, this metabolism thing.

Having failed my 1-hour glucose challenge for gestational diabetes, and also being part Native American, I switched over to a low-GI diet. I passed my 3-hour GTT with no probs, and I felt a lot better, too. I didn’t cut out sugar entirely, but limiting the pure sugars and pure white-bread (and other high-GI) content made a huge difference. Just switching to a different kind of bread makes a difference, as epeepunk noticed - he started losing weight just from going off white bread (whole wheat isn’t a lot better, BTW, unless you go for the heavy bran versions).

Interestingly enough, some of the foods I’d have avoided on the grounds that they were too likely to affect bloodsugar actually have pretty low GI… like sweet corn! Grains like barley, oats, and rye are also very low GI. A GI diet is more complicated to start on, but vastly more interesting to STAY on than most of the ‘diabetes’ diets. (Interesting side note, most Native American traditional diets aren’t necessarily high-starch all year round, but ARE very low GI in the starches that they use. Pima, for example, have one of the lowest traditional GI diets anywhere - and one of the highest obesity and diabetes rates on a ‘modern’ diet, too. Guess they adapted to low GI very well…)

You can check out http://www.glycemicindex.com for info on glycemic indexing, and for a cool a database where you can check out different foods. (University of Syndey site, BTW.)