Smoking and Diabetes

According to the Mayo Clinic in the United States, smoking tobacco increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes by raising blood sugar levels, resulting in increased insulin levels. That can lead to insulin resistance which increases the chance of developing both Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Anyone who smokes more than 20 cigarettes a day nearly doubles their risk of developing Type 2, in comparison with non-smokers.

Non-smokers who spend time with smokers often get the same diseases that are common in smokers. A group of researchers in the Department of Epidemiologyy and Health Index, Center for Genome Science, Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Osong, Korea, and the Department of Preventive Medicine, Gachon University of Medicine and Science, Incheon, Korea set out to discover whether secondhand tobacco smoke in the environment could put non-smokers at a high risk for Type 2 diabetes. The results of their study will be published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology in January 2011.

Ten thousand and thirty-eight people from 40 to 69 years of age were included in the study. Among four thousand four hundred and forty-two volunteers who had never smoked and had not been diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of the study: Read the rest of this entry »

Having diabetes and smoking sets you up for some serious health issues beyond your diabetes that are completely avoidable. Nicotine is stimulant; it raises your blood pressure, hardens arteries and reduces your circulation. This all makes it more difficult to manage your blood sugar and this is just the beginning of your troubles.

Aside from making your blood sugar difficult to manage, having diabetes and smoking can triple your risk of heart disease something that diabetics are already at high risk for. Because smoking hardens arteries and raises cholesterol, this can accelerate the process of heart disease a great deal, shortening your life span and severely affecting the quality of your life.

Smoking also reduces the amount of oxygen that can reach your cells increasing your risk of stroke greatly. People that smoke are also at risk for more viral and bacterial infections and since it is a well known fact that diabetics do not heal as quickly as healthy people this can also put you at risk for major complications.

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New study confirms that cinnamon’s two pronged effects can help to prevent the onset of Type II diabetes

Writing in the June 2007 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Swedish researchers have found that cinnamon reduces the sudden rise in blood glucose levels that is one of the underlying causes of Type II diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome. It achieves this by delaying the emptying of the stomach contents into the small intestine. This study provides further scientific evidence that cinnamon can play an important role in preventing the onset of these ubiquitous diseases.

One of several biochemical mechanisms responsible for the cause of Type II diabetes is insulin resistance. And one of the causes of insulin resistance is the consumption of foods that cause a rapid rise in blood sugar – i.e high glycaemic index (high GI) foods. A diet consisting of predominantly high GI foods leads to sudden, rapid rises in blood sugar levels that over the years may lead to insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance is a state where the cell receptors no longer respond adequately to insulin. By failing to respond to insulin the cell is unable to allow glucose through its protective cell membrane and will be deprived of its energy source. This in turn leads to the malfunctioning of intracellular processes and ultimately the diseases, Metabolic Syndrome (Syndrome X) and Type II diabetes.

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