Upstate Medical University presents a medical student minute.

Hi.

I'm Meg.

Lovier A third year medical student at Up state's Northern College of Medicine.

With my medical student minute.

A very interesting thing I've learned is why diabetes and high blood sugar are so bad.

Especially when sugar tastes so good.

The answer is simpler than yo might think, but let's back up and explain.

Diabetes.

Diabetes mellitus is when our blood has more sugar or glucose than normal.

Some people have type on diabetes, an autoimmune disorder where our body destroys the parts of our pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that helps move glucose out of our blood and into our cells to use as energy.

Others have type two.

When our body becomes numb to insulin after too much exposure, either way, the glucose still stays in the bloo instead of being used as fuel.

But why is that so bad?

Consider raw candy.

If you put a string in sugar water, the sugar will slowly crystallize on the string to make rock candy.

The same thing can happen in our bodies.

Glucose collects on the walls of our blood vessels and those crystals can grow large enough to block off small blood vessels.

This can be devastatin to our smallest blood vessels, like those in our kidneys and nerves.

Kidney damage causes toxic waste to pile up in our blood because it can't be filtered out.

Nerve damage, meanwhile, causes loss of feeling from our fingers and toes in it gets dangerous when there's a wound we can't feel and then let rest and heal.

Plus, all that sugar in our blood is just as tasty to bacteria as it is to us.

So those wounds get infected quickly and can lead to amputation or deadly sepsis.

All of this is dark and controlling.

Diabetes is hard, but managing serum glucose in the early stages of diet and medication can prevent these horrible things.

And even if the diabetes has progressed, it's almost never too late to chang and keep it from getting worse.

Diabetes is very common so its danger can be underrated.

However, there are tons of experienced health professional to evaluate our risk and help.

I'm Meg Lovier and this ha been my medical student minute.