Does Sugar Cause Diabetes? | HuffPost UK Life

Growing up, I always heard that eating too much sugar would lead directly to type 2 diabetes.

It’s a trope often repeated in film and TV. For instance, in 2013’s Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Hansel, who has been force-fed sugar, contracts the “sugar sickness” that’s instantly cured with a shot of insulin. Charity Diabetes UK said this is a “gross oversimplification of how diabetes is caused”.

Meanwhile, the NHS’ East Lancashire Hospitals Trust writes that the idea that type 2 diabetes is caused by eating too much sugar is a “myth”, adding it is “not true to say that Type 2 diabetes is caused by sugar directly”.

So what does cause the condition, and where does sugar come into it all?

Here, we asked Dr Giuseppe Aragona, a GP and medical adviser for Prescription Doctor, to weigh in on the topic.

Dr Aragona described it as a “condition in which the body becomes increasingly resistant to the effects of insulin, meaning that glucose is not taken up and regulated as effectively as it should be, while the pancreas may also become less able to produce enough insulin to compensate.”

Though being overweight is a risk factor for type two diabetes, it doens’t paint the whole picture, he added.

Not only can people who aren’t overweight develop type 2 diabetes, but the GP said many other risk factors can come into play, including:

• family history,
• increasing age,
• ethnicity,
• previous gestational diabetes,
• high blood pressure,
• polycystic ovary syndrome, and
• certain medications.

This is why “it is usually unhelpful to reduce the condition to simply having eaten too much sugar, and equally unhelpful to assume that someone has somehow brought it upon themselves through their diet”.

It has a role, said Dr Aragona – but probably not as straightforward a one as you might think.

“The NHS description is broadly right, although the wording can be a little misleading because sugar intake and type 2 diabetes are not completely unrelated,” he explained.

“Eating sugar does not, by itself, directly cause type 2 diabetes in the simple sense that having sugar in your diet inevitably produces the condition, as type 2 diabetes develops through a combination of insulin resistance, reduced insulin production over time and a range of genetic, metabolic and lifestyle factors”.

Nonetheless, he said, a diet high in sugar can make type 2 diabetes more likely to occur, “particularly because it can make it easier to consume excess calories, gain weight and develop excess body fat, all of which can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

“It is therefore more accurate to think of sugar as one potential contributor to the overall dietary pattern and metabolic risk rather than as a single direct cause”, he said.

Sometimes, the doctor told us, type 2 diabetes can develop slowly, making it harder to spot.

But he shared that some symptoms should always prompt you to plan a GP appointment, including:

• being unusually thirsty,
• ]passing urine more frequently than normal,
• particularly at night,
• feeling persistently tired,
• losing weight without trying,
• having blurred vision,
• experiencing recurrent infections such as thrush, or
• noticing that cuts and other minor wounds are taking longer than usual to heal.

These don’t always spell dementia, and they can have other causes, he added. However, they’re still worth investigating, especially if you have multiple symptoms at once.

“If you are worried about diabetes but have no symptoms, it is also worth speaking to your GP about whether you should have a blood glucose or HbA1c test, as testing is often how type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes is picked up before symptoms become apparent,” added Dr Aragona.

Another myth on the NHS list about type 2 diabetes is that those with the condition can never eat sugar.

The doctor said, “If someone already has type 2 diabetes, I would not generally tell them that they need to eliminate sugar completely.

“The more useful approach is to look at the overall diet, with particular attention to sugary drinks, sweets, biscuits, cakes and other foods that contain a lot of free sugars, while aiming for a balanced diet containing plenty of vegetables, higher-fibre carbohydrates, pulses, fruit in sensible portions, protein and healthier sources of fat.”

He said some changes are still advised – for instance, water is a better option than sugary drinks, and eating a lot of foods with high amounts of free sugars can be risky.

“It is also worth remembering that carbohydrates in general affect blood glucose, so simply switching from sugar to another highly refined carbohydrate does not necessarily solve the problem,” the doctor said.

Finally, he ended, “People taking insulin or certain diabetes tablets need to be particularly careful about making major changes to their carbohydrate intake without discussing it with their healthcare professional, because some medicines can cause blood glucose to fall too low.

“For most people, though, the aim is not a completely sugar-free existence but a sustainable eating pattern, regular physical activity, appropriate medication where needed and sensible monitoring of blood glucose and cardiovascular risk factors.”