21/07/2025
What is Diabetes and How Does Weight Affect it?
There are two types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2.
Type 1 diabetes (previously called juvenile diabetes) occurs when an individual’s pancreas does not have the ability to make a normal amount of insulin.
In type 2 diabetes (previously called adult diabetes), the pancreas makes plenty of insulin, but the insulin is not being recognized by the cells for reasons that are not fully understood at this point. This is called insulin resistance. Because the cells don’t recognize the insulin, they won’t let the sugar in, so the amount of sugar in the blood remains high. The high level of sugar in the blood ultimately starts to damage blood vessels and lead to diabetes complications such as:
Heart attacks
Strokes
Blindness
Amputations
Kidney failure
The biggest risk factor for type 2 diabetes is weight.
Weight-loss is critical to the proper management of diabetes because it is the excess fat, especially the fat around our intestines known as visceral fat, that causes diabetes in the first place. Weight-loss of just 5-10% of body weight can dramatically improve your diabetes, reduce your need for medications, and in some individuals, reverses diabetes altogether. As we all know, losing weight and keeping it off can be exceedingly difficult.
