Sumeet: Tell me one thing, Edward, what actually causes Diabetes? Is it, you know, eating too much of junk food, like, having too much donut and sugary food? Or are there other contributors to Diabetes? 

Edward: Okay, well, and that's a tough question because you can always argue that, yes, genetics may be involved into it. However, in your dad's case, you know, you mentioned that he always observed a mostly vegetarian diet and always being active and always doing something that will keep him, in our view, he was not a candidate for being diagnosed as a diabetic. So there may be some genetic factors that preclude the fact that he may become diabetic down the road. 

But also, we cannot discard that maybe he was also consuming something else in addition to, the healthy vegetarian diet that may have contributed to him getting these high levels of sugar in their system and then down the road developing insulin resistance and therefore becoming diabetic. 

Sumeet: True, true. Yeah, I mean, I read that there are so many different things that can play. Of course you have bad health habits. But then if you look at, a lot of times these health habits are associated with different things as well, right? Like, let's say you have a very stressful work life, that could contribute, that could also contribute to eating more, eating at wrong times, eating wrong stuff. 

So, there are so many other things that come into play, as you said earlier, right? I mean, it's, yes, bad habits could play, but then there are things that, it's genetic predisposition to diabetes as well. Because I remember when my father was diagnosed, we were told that, hey, going forward, you need to be careful about what you eat, because you have that genetic thing in you as well now. Well, I'm not 100% sure about that, but, you know, you just pay attention to this information. 

Now, what are the different kinds of Diabetes and are there Diabetes that are more lethal versus non-lethal? 

Edward:  Well, there is a Type 1 Diabetes, which is normally an onset in early childhood, and it is characterized by patients not being able to produce insulin to actually protect them from having high spikes of blood sugar. And therefore, unfortunately, I think we have made some advancements, in medical care now that has helped us kind of extend the bad prognosis of Type 1 Diabetes. In the past, people with Type 1 Diabetes would not live over the past 30 years of age. And now we have seen increasingly, to my understanding and to what I've heard and read, that now some patients, they actually live longer than that if they take good care of their condition. 

There is Type 2 Diabetes, which is the one that we are mostly focusing on right now in lieu of the pandemic that we're living, where obesity has become the norm, where the blood sugar levels that we have with the diet that we're following nowadays and all the stressors, as you will put. There are so many factors that contribute to a person actually being able to develop diabetes down the road. 

Sumeet: So basically, Type 2 is something that is more prevalent and can impact you more negatively.

Edward:  Well, Type 2 is the one that is causing the majority of the problems nowadays. There is one third type of diabetes, and it's Gestational Diabetes that happens during pregnancy. And that normally reverses once the woman has the baby, then it goes back to normal. But it, yes, it also develops pregnancy diabetes. 

Sumeet: Actually, that's an interesting point. So pregnancy diabetes, does it like have negative effect on, pregnancy, the mother, the kid? 

Edward:  Yes, yes. It's a dangerous condition because high blood sugar levels, they're always bad for our body. And during pregnancy, you're talking about not only the mother, but the baby being subjected to it. And if it is not controlled, it may lead to a host of syndromes and situations that may endanger down the road the mother's life as well as the baby's life. 

Sumeet: So you need to be very careful. 

Edward: Yes. The good thing about this one is that normally, under normal conditions, once the delivery has happened, once the baby is born, everything goes back to normal. So it's just about controlling the amount of glucose levels while the lady, the person is pregnant. 

Sumeet:  Makes sense. One last question, Edward is, what are the long-term effects of diabetes or having high glucose level in your blood? Do they impact some organs differently than other organs? 

Edward: Well, basically, all your organs are affected by high glucose levels in your system because it is not used efficiently. It is actually clogging all the organs that they target - kidneys, arteries, heart, brain. The brain operates by using glucose. So if you have too much glucose in there, you are prone to suffer some problems down the road in your brain. 

The kidneys get clogged up and therefore you get kidney failure. Of course, the pancreas, if you're not producing enough insulin, it can be inflamed and you get pancreatitis and your liver is not able to store the unused glucose into its confines by getting turned into Glucagon. And then it is all sorts of problems having too much glucose in your system without control. 

Foot neuropathy, the capillaries in your feet, they don't feed your nerve endings in your foot because there's not enough fluidity in your blood, allowing all these nutrients to be dispensed to the nerves. Therefore, comparing to foot neuropathy, it slows down your ability to repair tissue. 

It is just a plethora of problems not having a good control over your blood sugar. 

Sumeet:  So you're saying that everything can get impacted because of this - liver, kidney, brain, basically top to bottom of your body, brain to feet. And that's something that my father had also said in the past that sometimes he cannot feel the tip of his toes. And then it could very well be that the nerve endings are slowing down because of the exact same issue. 

Edward:  Yes. 

Sumeet: Very, very insightful piece of information.

If you missed Sumeet and Edward's discussion on Diabetes Management, you can still watch The CoBionic Talk Show full episode here  -->  https://www.facebook.com/cobionic/videos/191289390570220