Chronically high intake of sugar especially from soft drinks can definitely contribute to type 2 diabetes
Just because someone has diabetes doesn’t mean they have a bad diet though. But excess calories and weight gain, increased liver fat, and worsening insulin resistance can directly lead to it and shit like red bull can certainly help that along.
Chronically high intake of sugar especially from soft drinks can definitely contribute to type 2 diabetes
While perhaps technically correct, this is misleading because it implies a relationship like smoking and cancer.
If you don’t already have T2D then sugar intake won’t give you T2D. It might make you overweight which might give you T2D but that’s not really the sugar.
Conversely, plenty of people eating a healthy balanced diet who are not overweight develop T2D.
If you don’t already have T2D then sugar intake won’t give you T2D
You don’t know that. The endocrine system is complicated, and Type 2 Diabetes usually shows up after a period of increasing insulin resistance, and then prediabetes.
Insulin resistance can come after your blood insulin levels remain chronically elevated, such as when you keep feeding yourself things that raise blood sugar.
It may or may not be direct, but weight management on a low sugar diet is far more plausible than high sugar diet.
Plus theories about constant bombardment of sugars and what it means for insulin resistance.
Short of it is that if you go nuts with the sugar, T2D is a quite plausible outcome. If you keep sugar low, your weight will probably also be reasonable and your insulin response is probably fine.
Yes, there are the unlucky souls that get it even if they seemingly do everything right, but the vast majority of folks I know including a lot of family got T2D after years of unmanaged obesity. In three cases I know personally where they got their weight under control and exercised, they had perfectly normal A1C and fasting blood sugar levels even if they were given a full blown T2D diagnosis.
“Contribute” and “causes” are not the same thing. I volunteer at a camp for kids with diabetes and one of the many things we need to work on with the kids is telling them they didn’t give themselves diabetes. People repeating what you are repeating is part of the problem.
Look, telling kids that they’re not responsible for their diabetes versus warning people not to drink too much high sugar soda because it can contribute to type 2 diabetes are two very different and fine things.
Agreed, and if OP said what you said it wouldn’t be a pet peeve of mine, but that’s not what they said. Sugar doesn’t cause diabetes. The fact that anyone still repeats that bullshit causes a lot more trouble for actual diabetics than you realize.
Just because something is a cause of diabetes doesn’t mean it’s the only one.
It’s a fine line to walk, reassuring those that didn’t cause their issue (and particularly ‘easier’ for type 1 diabetes, where lifestyle choices don’t factor in), but then you may also encourage people that can avoid type 2 diabetes to think “I’m golden, sugar doesn’t cause type 2 diabetes, let me drink a sugar drink 4 or 5 times a day”.
The problem here is throwing around medical terms as non-medical people. “Cause” has an exact definition in medical terms: the specific agent, event, genetic mutation, or underlying mechanism that is directly responsible for initiating a disease, condition, or pathological process. By that definition, the medical definition, sugar intake does not cause diabetes. I get that it’s a shit post and funny to make jokes about from a non-technical point, FFS I led by saying I understand it’s just a pet peeve that the terms are used interchangeably, but the fact so many people are so diehard about insisting that in some definition of cause or factor or “leads to” bullshit sugar can cause diabetes is exactly the source of my frustration.
To be clear: I didn’t say ‘cause’ I said ‘gives’ (blame the slogan lol). In fact, I haven’t to this point used the word ‘cause’ at all in this post, that was someone else. Those are two different things. I understand that it’s possibly not the clearest of distinctions at face value, but I stand by it. My understanding of the link between diabetes and sugar is that though sugar itself doesn’t ’cause’ diabetes, it can ‘trigger’ underlying genetic factors if ingested in too high of a quantity in certain individuals. Or, as another commenter stated, can lead to wait gain, which leads to diabetes, and is therefore an indirect cause. I don’t look at diabetes as a ‘cause’ per se, but rather like a key that unlocks the diabetes door. However, in that sense it still ‘gives’ you it in a way, even if not as a direct cause. It’s like when people say “kids give themselves tooth decay” kids don’t directly rot their own teeth, but they indirectly cause it by putting acids and things on their teeth, not brushing etc. and they still say that they gave themselves it. I agree it’s weird semantics, but it’s what we have to work with.
This is such a bad take. Sugar doesn’t directly give diabetes to you. Your pancreas will try it’s best, but if it’s genetics or just insanely high sugar levels, it doesn’t matter. The minute your body can’t keep up with insulin production, the high levels of blood sugar absolutely wreck you.
Leads to is still medically inaccurate. Too much sugar cannot lead to diabetes. Too much sugar CAN lead to weight gain, and weight gain CAN lead to diabetes, but sugar intake cannot LEAD to diabetes.
I don’t know why doctors would have any authority on my statement which does not mention medicine. My statement is about logic and language, not about medicine.
SSB [sugar sweetened beverage] consumption can lead to weight gain, inflammation, and T2DM [type 2 diabetes].
The fact that it talks about drinks directly rather than sugar is, if anything, more relevant to our discussion! Now, there are many caveats in the paper, obviously, but we are talking about a narrow statement that consumption of sugar (or drinks containing it) “can lead to diabetes” and you denied it.
I think you’re hung up on the direct causal links to the point where you’re objecting to perfectly ordinary turns of phrase. “Can lead to” does not mean the same as “directly causes.” Do you have a way, in your preferred language, of referring to the path from too much sugar to diabetes, without explicitly mentioning weight gain?
I haven’t denied weight as a factor or too much sugar as a factor, if that’s the term you’re looking for, but even in the article you reference the same issue comes up of moving the goalposts. Eating sugar does not cause diabetes, nor is just eating sugar a factor. Eating large quantities of sugar is a factor. See the difference?
So what I would say to you is that when you say “eating large quantities of sugar is a factor [in developing diabetes]” other people, including me, say “too much sugar can lead to developing diabetes” and mean exactly the same thing.
If you want to be precise, you can qualify phrases like “can lead to” and “cause” and so on with “directly or indirectly” - but to me, without that qualification, they can mean either.
Not directly, but indirectly as you have pointed out. To me, whether directly or indirectly, it still leads to it one way or another. Or can lead to, rather.
Do all people who eat sugar get fat? Do all people who get fat get diabetes? I fully admit it’s a pet peeve of people not using the correct terms but it leads to real issues of not understanding what causes diabetes. If you have your pancreas removed that CAUSES type 1 diabetes, because it is impossible for you to not get type 1 diabetes once the pancreas is gone. You see that is not the same relationship, right?
Obviously not everyone who has a reasonable amount of sugar gets fat or diabetes.
However, NO ONE has actually claimed that straw man. This culture of ‘only drink things that have at least a hundred calories of refined sugar added’ is a huge problem for weight gain and diabetes.
In your analogy, yo usay removing the pancreas causes type 1 diabetes. This is absolutely a cause. Yet on the other hand you seem to be arguing that since there are other causes besides high sugar diets that can also cause type 2 diabetes, you shouldn’t say high sugar diets cause diabetes.
High sugar diets are a huge risk. Some people manage to get away with such a diet without diabetes (but likely get other issues with weight gain), and some people have the misfortune to get it anyway, but the fact remains a high sugar diet can result in diabetes, though arguments can be had about how direct/indirect the relationship is.
Well that’s why I said ‘can’ lead to. I’m not saying literally everyone in that situation ends up the same, what I’m saying is it’s an indirect cause for some people. Of course there’s always other causes, whether direct or indirect.
So we agree, sugar doesn’t cause diabetes? Nothing you said contradicts that, and you describing the result of high blood sugar doesn’t speak to what causes it. I’ve only been diabetic for 13 years, 4 as a diabetic educator at a camp for kids with diabetes, what would I know?
Type 1 or type 2 or gestational? I’ll answer all 3. Many types 1’s eat a reduced carb diet as a means to simplify dosing. Every gram of carbs must be manually accounted for and dosed for. Less carbs means less glucose spikes means less math and less dosing. To be medically accurate this is not considered “treatment” since it isn’t treating the disease, for a type 1 treatment consists of insulin, glucose monitoring, carb counting, and you can argue glucagon in that list as a treatment for insulin overdose.
Type 2, you could describe aspects of TREATMENT of type 2 with what you said, with caveats. Type 2 is often but not always associated with diet, exercise, and genetic predisposition. With that context less sugar means less weight gain means less likelihood of getting type 2 if one is prediabetic. The other side of that is lowering carb intake helps with weight loss which can cure type 2 (not always) and it helps with what I described for type 1’s: less carbs means less sugar spikes means less insulin. None of that has anything to do with the simple statement that eating sugar does not cause diabetes.
Gestational, similar but different type 2, with the understanding that the genetic component means you can still get it even with proper weight, diet, and exercise management.
No, for the first, we call that lifestyle modification, it’s absolutely a form of non-pharmaceutical treatment, like physical therapy. Diet and exercise are essential. I am arguing that if control of sugar and carbs helps response, it can also be assumed that uncontrolled sugar will create more problems. Sugar is a culprit.
I’ll restate my previous with type 1 in mind: sugar isn’t the sole cause of diabetes, but it absolutely contributes to developement of type 2, which the original poster was eluding to and seems to be going way over your head.
Educating people, especially children, that sugar doesn’t cause diabetes is a misleading over-simplification of the disease. It’s wreckless and contributes to a lower quality of life over time. I’d absolutely ask you or your manager to reevaluate your current understanding.
Well thank you for your factually incorrect assessment of the situation. I will take it under advisement and have decided not to tell a camp of type 1 diabetic kids that sugar causes diabetes, because then I would be as wrong as you are.
Pet peeve… sugar doesn’t give you diabetes.
Chronically high intake of sugar especially from soft drinks can definitely contribute to type 2 diabetes
Just because someone has diabetes doesn’t mean they have a bad diet though. But excess calories and weight gain, increased liver fat, and worsening insulin resistance can directly lead to it and shit like red bull can certainly help that along.
While perhaps technically correct, this is misleading because it implies a relationship like smoking and cancer.
If you don’t already have T2D then sugar intake won’t give you T2D. It might make you overweight which might give you T2D but that’s not really the sugar.
Conversely, plenty of people eating a healthy balanced diet who are not overweight develop T2D.
You don’t know that. The endocrine system is complicated, and Type 2 Diabetes usually shows up after a period of increasing insulin resistance, and then prediabetes.
Insulin resistance can come after your blood insulin levels remain chronically elevated, such as when you keep feeding yourself things that raise blood sugar.
It may or may not be direct, but weight management on a low sugar diet is far more plausible than high sugar diet.
Plus theories about constant bombardment of sugars and what it means for insulin resistance.
Short of it is that if you go nuts with the sugar, T2D is a quite plausible outcome. If you keep sugar low, your weight will probably also be reasonable and your insulin response is probably fine.
Yes, there are the unlucky souls that get it even if they seemingly do everything right, but the vast majority of folks I know including a lot of family got T2D after years of unmanaged obesity. In three cases I know personally where they got their weight under control and exercised, they had perfectly normal A1C and fasting blood sugar levels even if they were given a full blown T2D diagnosis.
“Contribute” and “causes” are not the same thing. I volunteer at a camp for kids with diabetes and one of the many things we need to work on with the kids is telling them they didn’t give themselves diabetes. People repeating what you are repeating is part of the problem.
Look, telling kids that they’re not responsible for their diabetes versus warning people not to drink too much high sugar soda because it can contribute to type 2 diabetes are two very different and fine things.
Agreed, and if OP said what you said it wouldn’t be a pet peeve of mine, but that’s not what they said. Sugar doesn’t cause diabetes. The fact that anyone still repeats that bullshit causes a lot more trouble for actual diabetics than you realize.
Just because something is a cause of diabetes doesn’t mean it’s the only one.
It’s a fine line to walk, reassuring those that didn’t cause their issue (and particularly ‘easier’ for type 1 diabetes, where lifestyle choices don’t factor in), but then you may also encourage people that can avoid type 2 diabetes to think “I’m golden, sugar doesn’t cause type 2 diabetes, let me drink a sugar drink 4 or 5 times a day”.
The problem here is throwing around medical terms as non-medical people. “Cause” has an exact definition in medical terms: the specific agent, event, genetic mutation, or underlying mechanism that is directly responsible for initiating a disease, condition, or pathological process. By that definition, the medical definition, sugar intake does not cause diabetes. I get that it’s a shit post and funny to make jokes about from a non-technical point, FFS I led by saying I understand it’s just a pet peeve that the terms are used interchangeably, but the fact so many people are so diehard about insisting that in some definition of cause or factor or “leads to” bullshit sugar can cause diabetes is exactly the source of my frustration.
To be clear: I didn’t say ‘cause’ I said ‘gives’ (blame the slogan lol). In fact, I haven’t to this point used the word ‘cause’ at all in this post, that was someone else. Those are two different things. I understand that it’s possibly not the clearest of distinctions at face value, but I stand by it. My understanding of the link between diabetes and sugar is that though sugar itself doesn’t ’cause’ diabetes, it can ‘trigger’ underlying genetic factors if ingested in too high of a quantity in certain individuals. Or, as another commenter stated, can lead to wait gain, which leads to diabetes, and is therefore an indirect cause. I don’t look at diabetes as a ‘cause’ per se, but rather like a key that unlocks the diabetes door. However, in that sense it still ‘gives’ you it in a way, even if not as a direct cause. It’s like when people say “kids give themselves tooth decay” kids don’t directly rot their own teeth, but they indirectly cause it by putting acids and things on their teeth, not brushing etc. and they still say that they gave themselves it. I agree it’s weird semantics, but it’s what we have to work with.
This is such a bad take. Sugar doesn’t directly give diabetes to you. Your pancreas will try it’s best, but if it’s genetics or just insanely high sugar levels, it doesn’t matter. The minute your body can’t keep up with insulin production, the high levels of blood sugar absolutely wreck you.
This. Right here. This is how sugar leads to diabetes (it still gives you it in a sense)
Leads to is still medically inaccurate. Too much sugar cannot lead to diabetes. Too much sugar CAN lead to weight gain, and weight gain CAN lead to diabetes, but sugar intake cannot LEAD to diabetes.
I think if A can lead to B and B can lead to C, then A can lead to C.
Not according to doctors.
I don’t know why doctors would have any authority on my statement which does not mention medicine. My statement is about logic and language, not about medicine.
I suspect you’re also wrong in the particular case. Let’s see what the first article I pulled out says:
The fact that it talks about drinks directly rather than sugar is, if anything, more relevant to our discussion! Now, there are many caveats in the paper, obviously, but we are talking about a narrow statement that consumption of sugar (or drinks containing it) “can lead to diabetes” and you denied it.
I think you’re hung up on the direct causal links to the point where you’re objecting to perfectly ordinary turns of phrase. “Can lead to” does not mean the same as “directly causes.” Do you have a way, in your preferred language, of referring to the path from too much sugar to diabetes, without explicitly mentioning weight gain?
I haven’t denied weight as a factor or too much sugar as a factor, if that’s the term you’re looking for, but even in the article you reference the same issue comes up of moving the goalposts. Eating sugar does not cause diabetes, nor is just eating sugar a factor. Eating large quantities of sugar is a factor. See the difference?
So what I would say to you is that when you say “eating large quantities of sugar is a factor [in developing diabetes]” other people, including me, say “too much sugar can lead to developing diabetes” and mean exactly the same thing.
If you want to be precise, you can qualify phrases like “can lead to” and “cause” and so on with “directly or indirectly” - but to me, without that qualification, they can mean either.
Cheers!
Not directly, but indirectly as you have pointed out. To me, whether directly or indirectly, it still leads to it one way or another. Or can lead to, rather.
Do all people who eat sugar get fat? Do all people who get fat get diabetes? I fully admit it’s a pet peeve of people not using the correct terms but it leads to real issues of not understanding what causes diabetes. If you have your pancreas removed that CAUSES type 1 diabetes, because it is impossible for you to not get type 1 diabetes once the pancreas is gone. You see that is not the same relationship, right?
Obviously not everyone who has a reasonable amount of sugar gets fat or diabetes.
However, NO ONE has actually claimed that straw man. This culture of ‘only drink things that have at least a hundred calories of refined sugar added’ is a huge problem for weight gain and diabetes.
In your analogy, yo usay removing the pancreas causes type 1 diabetes. This is absolutely a cause. Yet on the other hand you seem to be arguing that since there are other causes besides high sugar diets that can also cause type 2 diabetes, you shouldn’t say high sugar diets cause diabetes.
High sugar diets are a huge risk. Some people manage to get away with such a diet without diabetes (but likely get other issues with weight gain), and some people have the misfortune to get it anyway, but the fact remains a high sugar diet can result in diabetes, though arguments can be had about how direct/indirect the relationship is.
Did… did you look at the original shit post image we’re talking about? Please don’t tell me no one is saying sugar causes diabetes, because dude…
Well that’s why I said ‘can’ lead to. I’m not saying literally everyone in that situation ends up the same, what I’m saying is it’s an indirect cause for some people. Of course there’s always other causes, whether direct or indirect.
So we agree, sugar doesn’t cause diabetes? Nothing you said contradicts that, and you describing the result of high blood sugar doesn’t speak to what causes it. I’ve only been diabetic for 13 years, 4 as a diabetic educator at a camp for kids with diabetes, what would I know?
So why does treatment that consists of reducing or controlling glucose also control for symptoms and progression of diabetes?
Type 1 or type 2 or gestational? I’ll answer all 3. Many types 1’s eat a reduced carb diet as a means to simplify dosing. Every gram of carbs must be manually accounted for and dosed for. Less carbs means less glucose spikes means less math and less dosing. To be medically accurate this is not considered “treatment” since it isn’t treating the disease, for a type 1 treatment consists of insulin, glucose monitoring, carb counting, and you can argue glucagon in that list as a treatment for insulin overdose.
Type 2, you could describe aspects of TREATMENT of type 2 with what you said, with caveats. Type 2 is often but not always associated with diet, exercise, and genetic predisposition. With that context less sugar means less weight gain means less likelihood of getting type 2 if one is prediabetic. The other side of that is lowering carb intake helps with weight loss which can cure type 2 (not always) and it helps with what I described for type 1’s: less carbs means less sugar spikes means less insulin. None of that has anything to do with the simple statement that eating sugar does not cause diabetes.
Gestational, similar but different type 2, with the understanding that the genetic component means you can still get it even with proper weight, diet, and exercise management.
No, for the first, we call that lifestyle modification, it’s absolutely a form of non-pharmaceutical treatment, like physical therapy. Diet and exercise are essential. I am arguing that if control of sugar and carbs helps response, it can also be assumed that uncontrolled sugar will create more problems. Sugar is a culprit.
I’ll restate my previous with type 1 in mind: sugar isn’t the sole cause of diabetes, but it absolutely contributes to developement of type 2, which the original poster was eluding to and seems to be going way over your head.
Educating people, especially children, that sugar doesn’t cause diabetes is a misleading over-simplification of the disease. It’s wreckless and contributes to a lower quality of life over time. I’d absolutely ask you or your manager to reevaluate your current understanding.
Well thank you for your factually incorrect assessment of the situation. I will take it under advisement and have decided not to tell a camp of type 1 diabetic kids that sugar causes diabetes, because then I would be as wrong as you are.
I give you diabetes.
Does that cancel out my existing diabetes or give me some kind of Super Diabetes?
True but it can still trigger diabetes