That's what I've always thought. After knowing diabetics in my family and friends, it seems obvious that diabetes is a type of addiction in some people.
Many diabetics crave sugar and will binge on it. I've seen diabetics binge and then give themselves a couple of injections of insulin to compensate, like that was going to fix everything.
Also, when you've been close to diabetics, it's easy to notice when they've been "good" and when they've been off their feed. The mood swings and personality changes will tip you off.
It reminds me of alcoholism, and I bet someday they will show a tie. You can plead with some diabetics, show them the facts, everything. You will get denial, and indignation: "it's my life and I can do what I want", "So what if it kills me, we've all got to die", etc. etc.
I mention all this not to impugn diabetics but to share my thoughts that it is a mystery in many of the same ways as alcoholism, and maybe just as tough a fight to beat it.
“..it seems obvious that diabetes is a type of addiction in some people.”
Sorry, no. Wish it was. Diabetes is a disease caused not by choice, but by the failure of the body to work within it’s needs.
Weight is not the cause of the illness, it is a part of the affliction. I’m six feet one, and when I was diagnosed with type II I weighed 175 pounds and was easily passing all my physical fitness requirements for the military along with playing sports like basketball, racquetball, and baseball/softball. I was as fit as I could possibly be with a less than 4% body fat measurement according to military doctors.
But because my body was not producing insulin that worked, my body failed to get the use out of the fuel I was consuming. So I wasn’t cutting back on food to lose weight, I was starving the body of nutrients and fuel.
Diets and even starvation will not work as your body will adjust to dampen the failure of muscle use due to lack of fuel until you starve to death. But that doesn’t make your body work correctly.
It actually invites the body to adjust until it will start to shut down functions, or, starvation sepsis. According to Clinical Nutrition ESPEN, a European medical group that studies body needs, food intake in humans is an intermittent process but energy is expended continually. Therefore, humans adapt well to short-term starvation. But the body will break down and start to shut down functions when it is starving of fuel. And all the protein, and other elements you normally consume will not stop it.
And that is the problem diabetics face daily in that balance of consuming enough fuel to live, but not gain or lose weight when the body decides for you that it isn’t going to use the fuel you provided and turns it into fat, or in hypo cases, sends it out of the body. Meantime, you feel like you are exhausted, and the weight adds to the problem as the body doesn’t break it down for use because of the lack of insulin and the insulin you have doesn’t work well.
It’s a delicate balance that you can’t keep up with because of outside needs. And those needs happen from moment to moment in most cases.
rwood