Sparing the details, a colleague of mine recently had his big toe amputated due to diabetes. I wondered why being diabetic could lead to this as it’s common.
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At its core diabetes mellitus is a micro-vascular disease. Sure, it’s endocrine and insulin and hyperglycemia, but the cause of its side effects is micro-vascular.
High blood sugar damages the lining of small blood vessels. Like, vessels the width of one or two red blood cells. This damage causes platelet adhesion which results in a clot formation. This blocks the vessel and no blood can move forward in that vessel. But is a TINY vessel, so no big deal…. Until it’s happening everywhere, all at once, all the time. Then, big deal.
Those vessels feed the nerves in your feet and hands, and your feet and hands are PACKED with nerves. As those nerves lose blood flow they die and you develop progressive numbness. Similar damage can happen to your stomach causing gastroparesis (stomach paralysis).
Besides that your retinas, kidneys, and heart are all collections of tiny blood vessels or rely on tiny blood vessels to function. Hence diabetic retinopathy (blindness being the end), renal disease (most dialysis patients are diabetics), and coronary artery disease. Also peripheral artery disease, vascular dementia (brain slowly destroying for lack of micro blood flow), and susceptibility to common bacterial infections (repeated abscesses, pneumonia, etc) because your immune system uses those micro-vessels to get to infection sites.
Diabetes is a huuuuuge problem
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