I am a newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic and doing research into how to manage everything. I keep seeing to keep blood sugar under 180mg/dl and damage starts there. But why?
Wouldn’t everyone be different? Also what is so damaging at that number? I understand the damage to the kidneys overworking to clean the sugar out but why would it hurt blood vessels in the extremities and eyes?
Is it just that the sugar thickens the blood too much or something?
Basically I understand that high blood sugar causes damage but why? And why specifically at 180mg/dl?
In: Biology
When it comes to diabetes and blood sugar being too high, you should separate into acutely high and chronically high.
For acutely high, this can cause diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) or hyperosmolar hyperglycemic state (HHS, only seen in type 2 diabetes). The physiology of it is complex, but basically the sugar gets super high which causes you to pee a lot and get dehydrated and a lot of acid builds up in the blood, both of which are really dangerous. This can be treated and resolved relatively quickly.
For chronically high blood sugar, we typically split the complications into microvascular (small blood vessel) and macrovascular (large blood vessel) complications. For microvascular, the sugar leaks into the small blood vessel walls and causes damage to those blood vessels, causing them to narrow. This then causes decreased blood flow and oxygen to organs which damages them. That’s why you can get kidney damage and eye damage.
For macrovascular complications, too much sugar hurts the cells that line the inside of the large blood vessel that normally keep things from leaking out. When these cells are hurt, this allows more cholesterol to leak into blood vessels and you start to develop plaques, which ultimately increases your risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Too much sugar also can go into nerves and cause too much water to go into those nerves, which damages them and leads to neuropathy.
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