– Why does untreated diabetes cause parts of limbs to die?
In: Biology
Explain like you’re actually 5: Little bits of sugar are very sharp. When you are a diabetic, the sugar stays in your blood where it’s not supposed to be. When that sharp sugar goes through really tiny blood tubes, it cuts the walls of the blood tubes and causes leaking and hurts them. When they’re hurt pretty bad over a long time, they don’t heal anymore. There are a lot of tiny blood tubes in your fingers and toes, also in your kidneys and eyes. That’s why high sugar in your blood for a long time starts to hurt those body parts.
EDIT: okay, I see that I went too over-simplified to the point of giving an incorrect answer, I’m sorry. “Sharp” is the wrong word here; blood glucose is damaging to blood vessels and causes endothelial dysfunction and inflammatory molecule release, which leads to leaky blood vessels. In the eye blood vessels, it causes the death of pericytes, which are supporting cells that line the little blood vessels. It also causes atherosclerosis (fatty plaque build-up in blood vessels), which leads to blood vessel disease as well.
TL;DR Sugar in the blood damages blood vessels and makes them leaky through multiple mechanisms.
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