Diabetes is certainly in the genes, but, let's face it, our diet plays the biggest role as to whether or not we will get it. The problem is that the diet that leads to diabetes is supposedly "healthy." The other problem is that moderate exercise probably does not help one way or the other.

I know I am pre-disposed to diabetes. It is not just my family history, which is terrible, but the fact that almost all my weight gain occurs in my tummy. I have a pancreas that simply cannot deal with refined carbs. Okay, so say I get diagnosed with T2 in ten years. I can say I ate normally and got exercise. Both are true. BUT, I did not eat right for MY body. I have a major symptom of crappy pancreas and yet I continued to eat carbs. Well, then in a way I did sort of eat my way into diabetes.

Of course if you tell people that healthy eating involves 11 servings of grain a day, you are going to tell those same people that there was nothing they could have done to prevent diabetes. Hey, and guess what, you are not lying!

A programme in a TV series 'The Hospital' was repeated here recently. It featured the work of an endocrinologist who worked with teenagers. I realise it wasn't a completely representative group being shown, but only one of these young people had a (very) serious weight problem. For the majority the problem was alcohol and binge drinking. There was also that teenage thing of being "concrete, bullet-proof and invisible" where controlling diabetes came a very poor second to partying with your pals. It made me weep in frustration, particularly when they showed the poor lad who was carrying out his own peritoneal dialysis at home four times a day. It seemed an awful price to pay for being young and wreckless. But then, as most of us here know, there was never any advice to cut out carbs. Indeed, the (very) overweight young lady was living on potatoes and dumplings with side salad, believing she was following the correct regime

Hi nifty55,

Perhaps, if you sent a message to Dr. Briffa, he might write a blog post on this particular teenager. As an MD, his opinion carries more weight than 10 laypeople.

<Sigh>. My parents were both T2 diabetics with the worst diet in the world, and now I'm a T2 diabetic. My parents were both obese for many years, and now I'm obese.

But my sister has *always* eaten a diet far worse than mine. I always loved my sweets, but she is fanatic. Can't seem to make it through the day without candy, brownies, cakes, pies, Dunkin Donuts. She'll try to go LC, but never lasts more than a couple days without falling facedown intoa major carbfest.

But she remains very slender, non-diabetic, and just about in perfect health.

On a similar note I've also been diagnosed with Hashimoto's. My *other* sister, who is not merely slender but downright skinny (6 feet tall and about 135 pounds) and has always been super-careful about what she eats, was ALSO diagnosed with Hashimoto's in the last year.

But sugar addict sister's thyroid is also in perfect working order.

Debbie,

You should demand DNA maternity and paternity tests for the sugar-addict "sister" of yours. Heck, get them for the other sister, too; she sounds suspect.

aj > LOL! Sadly though... I'm inclined to agree ;-)

Well, I've been low-carb for probably 6 years and I've been diagnosed as pre-diabetic. I'm not overweight and I never was obese. My last blood work confirms this and I have an appointment with my Dr. to discuss my results -- I imagine the next step is an HbA1c test which will probably be below the guidelines for diabetes and he'll want to send me for more pre-diabetes education. At least this time I won't have a bad cold and will be able to question the "educators". And I will NOT change the way I eat to include more "healthywholegrains".

Perhaps if I gave up my two glasses of red wine daily, that might make a difference? To paraphrase, "Oh, I could never give up my wine!"

I think it's a combination of things. One is the huge amount of sugars, especially fructose, people are consuming. Another is being born of a mother with metabolic issues, so the stage is probably set long before one actually gets fat, if they ever do, and diabetic. Then there's probably stuff, meds, chemicals and such, that also tip the balance.

So, most likely people are getting diabetes by a combination of things. Sadly they might even be eating a healthy diet as prescribed by public policy, but it isn't a healthy diet.

Yep, diabetes in my family is pretty huge. On my dad's side every generation had 1 person with type II, and on my mothers side 2/3rds of the people have type II - and neither side is overweight at all, and eat high starch/medium fat/moderate protein.

I'm pretty much the odd one out, I was the only one who was ever significantly overweight (90 pounds vs the most anyone else has had to lose is 20 pounds because the "doctor said so"), yet don't have diabetes. My brother isn't diabetic, at least yet, though he could have fifteen diseases by now with the way he eats (baked goods with HFCS/sucrose/trans fats/honey).

Jay > your body's tendency to store fat probably saved you. Recent research seems to indicate that adipose cells are basically a 'distributed organ' - like skin - and a critical part of the immune system. Almost like an "absorption layer." The degree to which one's genetics allow them to 'absorb' (basically, shuffle off and store in fat) might (this is a maybe) help make the difference between 'when' one develops actual disease (when thin, when at 20# over, when at 100# over, when at 500# over, whatever). When the genetic setting says "no more absorption," the problems (aside from fat storage) really start or increase.

PJ

On top of all those factors, comes epigenetics. If your grandmother ate a crappy diet, that affected your mother's gene expression, and then she ate a crappy diet, then your gene expression might be crap to begin with. Your mother may not even have had metabolic issues that ever presented.

Long before you can decide for yourself what to eat, literally before you were conceived, you were set up for diabetes or obesity and/or other diseases. This perfectly explains how changes in health take place over generations. Nuclear genes are not altered, just turned on or off. I just read about this recently, google "Deep Nutrition" and/or "Pottenger's Prophecy".

True. The way I understand it is that many overweight/obese people are actually handling sugar BETTER than their thin counterparts. It sounds like the opposite should be true, but getting excess insulin out of the blood by putting it in the fat cells is ultimately better for you. Now, that does not mean you are healthy. It just means that you show a physical manifestation of a problem that many people have: excess insulin. I think that would also explain why most people that get T2 diabetes are overweight or obese, but why thin people can get it too.

I think ultimately each individual needs to monitor their own risk factors. Sure we all have relatives who are skinny with T2 or severely obese with no health issues. But I think any family history coupled with a tendency to put on weight in the mid-section should be a big red flag. I take it seriously, anyway.