so let's talk about what sugar does to your arteries and probably the biggest
damage from high amounts of sugar in the blood with a diabetic is done to your
vascular system and I want to talk about what occurs in that state so you have
two things you have the macro vascular system and the micro vascular system so
the large vessels and then the small capillaries in the large vessels you
have the coronary artery that's the artery that supplies the heart muscle
okay and then you also have peripheral arteries throughout your body and then
you have the micro vascular system which goes to the retina of the eye or the
kidney if you think about it what does the kidney do it filters your blood so
you have the entire vascular system that gets filtered through the kidney so you
have a lot of capillaries in the kidney then you have these tiny nerves in your
feet or your hands okay so when you have high levels of sugar you can create
these damages called peripheral neuropathy where your the bottom of your
feet or the fingertips become numb or painful or burning pain and that
progresses to a situation when you have more and more damage to the nervous
system and it could potentially get necrosis or literally like the the
tissue is rotting and that's simply because of this sugar rusts out your
vascular system it creates all sorts of oxidation and you can think about like a
an old car that has rust on it the same thing happens inside your arteries they
start to oxidize and you start seeing damage the layer of the inside of the
blood vessel is called the endothelium and the endothelium controls the tone of
the blood vessels it prevents certain things from invading the blood vessel so
it acts as a barrier and it's highly sensitive to too much sugar so high
levels of glucose mimic inflammatory initiators so glucose creates
inflammation in the arteries and that's the very beginning stage of a sequence
of events that end up as a blockage in your artery it starts with an oxidation
damage inflammation cholesterol will come in after the fact so people are
focused on the cholesterol but that is just trying to heal this inflamed
damaged endothelium layer the oxidation has both direct and indirect effects I'm
not going to get into all the technical things about it but it creates a lot of
serious effects and inside the body they you don't really know are happening
until you have a problem later in life it'll also start thickening the inside
of the blood vessels creating stiffness and then from the
high sugar you develop insulin resistance which starts to create a
decreased blood flow and a lot of the neurological damage that occurs from
having diabetes or high sugar comes from the damaged blood vessels that starve
off the nerves that's really what happens another effect that sugar has in
the arteries is it creates these called AGEs
advanced glycated end products and this is a very toxic thing to the arteries
and to the rest of your body to the nervous system to the brain to the
pancreas and then another thing that occurs when you have hyperglycemia high
blood sugar is that you start to develop excessive amounts of sorbitol now
sorbitol alcohol that's what it's called start to build up in the cells and
starts accumulating fluid and starts to damage the cells in the retina this
leads to cataracts in the retina which can eventually lead to blindness and
then to the myelin sheath which destroys the nerve and that's why diabetics get
the peripheral neuropathies in the feet in the hands and it starts spreading up
this way because it starts to destroy the vascular system and the nervous
system and if you can't bring in oxygen and nutrition to the tissues it starts
to die you get necrosis other than that you're perfectly fine also realize that
your body has the ability to make its own sugar if needed
it's called gluconeogenesis and so does this same thing happen
when your body makes sugar no it doesn't because your body also makes
antioxidants that protects against the complications of high sugar and these
are the antioxidants that it makes because with glucose comes oxidation
comes high levels of free radical damage okay this is another reason why you
should eat food high in antioxidants versus buying some pill that has an
antioxidant you should eat lots of food with any
accidents you should beef up no pun intended your
vegetable levels to prevent some of the complications of this high sugar
situation this is why diabetics that are eating healthier that have additional
antioxidant support have less complications from the diabetes another
really good thing to take for some of these conditions has been thought to
mean it's a that side will be one that can definitely protect the peripheral
neuropathy from the complications of high sugar and also the kidney to a
certain level and also the retina but fYI
to be totally transparent the research on these two were mainly done in animals
not humans but I personally used benfotiamine with a lot of clients for
peripheral neuropathy and have seen amazing amazing results
so in summary learn from the mistakes of others learn from this knowledge of what
happens to your body when you eat too much sugar and don't wait for these
conditions to happen because a lot of the symptoms that occur with this don't
show up for years until it's to the point where it might be too late for
more information on blood sugars and diabetes I put some interesting videos
on this board