Sugar and Diabetes: Dispelling the Myth

Many of my patients with diabetes wonder whether eating sugar caused the disease.

It’s easy to see why they might think that: A person with diabetes is generally advised to avoid foods with a high sugar content and to maintain a diet and medication schedule that keeps as normal a blood sugar level as possible. Improved blood sugar control may reduce the chances that certain complications of the disease will develop. But just because the disease is characterized by an elevated blood sugar level and because lowering the blood sugar level is an important goal of therapy, a high-sugar diet does not cause the illness. An elevated blood sugar level is a result of having diabetes, not the cause.

Assuming an elevated blood sugar level is the cause of diabetes is like assuming that coughing is the cause of pneumonia. And not only does sugar itself not cause diabetes, there is no convincing evidence that sugar causes other problems that it has been blamed for, such as hyperactivity. 

Dispelling this myth regarding sugar may correct the assumption many people have about the development of diabetes — that people with this illness have brought it on themselves by eating the wrong kinds of foods. Although it is true that avoiding obesity may reduce the chances of developing type 2 diabetes, the specific types of foods you eat may play little or no known role. And not all people with diabetes are overweight — that's another myth. For these patients, heredity and perhaps other undiscovered factors are more important.

In recent years, researchers have found that exercise, weight loss and medication treatment for mild elevations in blood sugar (sometimes called “pre-diabetes”) may delay the onset of Type 2 diabetes. Other than exercise and maintaining an optimal body weight, there is no highly reliable way to prevent diabetes. Research is underway to identify genetic, immune, dietary, or other environmental factors that contribute to disease development in the hopes of preventing disease, especially in people at high risk.  But in any case, the notion that a high-sugar diet causes diabetes is a medical myth that demonstrates how the effect of an illness may be mistaken for its cause.

What other potential myths about diabetes have you run into?

Julie K. Silver, M.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. She is also the Chief Editor of Books for Harvard Health Publications.

Diabetes

Nearly 21 million Americans suffer from diabetes, and as anyone who has been affected by the disorder knows, it is about much more than a statistic: it means a new way of life. Diabetes: A plan for livingis a special report from Harvard Medical School that will help you learn how to better understand and manage your diabetes, including type 1 and type 2, as well as other variations of the disease. This report will show you that it’s not just possible to live with diabetes; it’s possible to live well.

 
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