Hey, remember when everybody was freaking out about Ebola, because of an outbreak that killed more than 10,000 people? Well, diabetes kills 1.5 million people a year worldwide, more than 200,000 of them in the U.S. And you're probably never more than a few dozen feet away from someone who has it -- there are 30 million diabetics in the U.S. alone.
In other words, for something most people consider too boring to even think about, the scale of the epidemic is mind-boggling. The U.S. alone spends an astonishing quarter of a trillion dollars a year fighting it. Or to put it another way, diabetes sucks a thousand bucks out of every single man, woman and child in America, every year.
We previously debunked the myth that sugar causes diabetes, and when we talked to someone with one variety of the disease, we learned about the parts of the experience you never hear about. He says ...
#5. The Disease And The Treatment Can Both Send You To The Emergency Room
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Our diabetic, Zach, once woke up in the middle of the night starving, his legs feeling near-paralyzed. His memory of the incident is hazy, but the next thing he knew, he was on a kitchen chair wearing only his boxers with an empty jar of raspberry jam on the table -- he'd eaten nearly the entire thing with his bare hands like fucking Winnie the Pooh.
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Oh, bother.
When he tested his blood sugar, it was 45 (the normal level is between 80 and 100). Anything below 70 is hypoglycemia, yet even after eating an entire jar of what is essentially pure sugar, his blood sugar level was still near emergency levels. If we're being completely honest, it's remarkable that he ever even woke up to eat that jam. By all rights he should've died in his bed. So this shit can get serious, is what we're saying.
"Wait," you ask, "isn't diabetes that disease where you just can't eat sugar, and have to take insulin every once in a while?" Oh, if only it was that simple.
For starters, you might be mixing up two very different types of diabetes (more on that in a bit). And when diabetics who inject insulin get their dose wrong, things can get bad fast. These problems ("insulin-related hypoglycemia and errors") spark almost 100,000 emergency room visits a year (more visits than those related to all stimulants, including methamphetamine). A third of those visits require hospitalization, because despite how common and treatable it is, diabetes can still straight-up murder your sorry ass.
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"Did you think 'death by chocolate' was just a fucking saying!?!"
On another occasion when he was in college, Zach knew his blood sugar was low before he went to bed, so he popped a few glucose tablets and went to sleep, thinking that would straighten everything out. He woke up with the sensation of sour rust in his mouth -- that's the taste of epinephrine, and it means things are catastrophically bad.
"When I checked my blood sugar," he says, "it was too low for the meter to give a number." He'd already eaten all his glucose tablets, so Zach needed to think of a solution quickly or he'd soon be unable to do anything to help himself. "Somehow I remembered there was a vending machine nearby. I bought a bottle of Pepsi, drained it in two seconds, and told a person in the dorm common room all about diabetes, at the speed of 400 words per minute."
If these episodes sound like bad drug trips gone wrong, well ...
#4. Fucked-Up Blood Sugar Gets You High And/Or Drunk
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If you see your roommate eating an entire trash bag full of discount Halloween candy, the go-to joke is something like, "Enjoy your diabetes, dude!" That's because in popular culture, the disease can be a result of poor diet and lack of exercise. But again, it's not that simple. You can in fact be born the genes that cause it.
Type 2 diabetes (previously called "adult-onset diabetes") is the one you probably associate with eating too much candy, as hauntingly portrayed by Jeremy Renner in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. With that type, your genes and often poor diet cause you to overwork the insulin-producing cells. But Type 1 diabetes is an entirely different beast. Here, your immune system decides to kill those insulin-producing cells, and this type is waiting for you when you pop out of the womb. That was the situation for Zach, who was just 15 months old when he was diagnosed, making him one of 3 million Type 1 diabetics in the U.S. Plus, plenty of people are only diagnosed with Type 1 after they turn 18, after being misdiagnosed by doctors with Type 2 for years.
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"Turns out it was in your DNA all along, but don't expect that to stop the fat jokes regardless of actual size."
A healthy body produces insulin to control the sugar (or glucose) in your blood stream. Type 1 diabetics can't produce insulin, while Type 2's produce it, but their bodies don't process it correctly. Too little insulin, and your blood sugar levels go shooting rapidly up, like the heart rate of somebody getting chased by a bear. Too much insulin, and your blood sugar eventually plummets, like the heart rate of someone who has just been eaten by a bear. And the effects of jacked-up blood sugar are weird. Diabetics describe high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) as slowing everything down and slathering it with whipped cream. Your brain gets fuzzy, and your eyes feel tethered to your head with frayed ropes -- it really is a kind of high. Just not a good kind.
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"Nope, The Doors still suck."
Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), meanwhile, is a bit like being drunk. For one thing, it impairs driving. Zach is usually super cautious about driving on low sugar, but his level plummeted once when he was on the road, giving him muscle spasms. He pulled over and quaffed some glucose gel, which we are sure would've looked like an intoxicated person pulling over to get even more high to a passing trooper. So being diabetic is like living in a world where, even with the best control, there are days where you can suddenly become uncomfortably drunk or high at any moment, without any of the fun.
And when we say "any moment," we mean it ...
#3. Sex Gives You A Sugar High
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In theory, stress raises your blood sugar because hormones like adrenaline release glucose, fueling your muscles for fight or flight. And in experiments with diabetic animals, stress always raises blood sugar. However, according to Zach, "stress and panic tends to make my blood sugar run low." Despite the fact that this makes no sense given what we know about the human body, he's not the only one to experience this apparent witchcraft.
On the other hand, sex should theoretically reduce your blood sugar because it's physical exertion. But for Zach and some other random diabetics, sex actually raises it. "I have no idea why," he says. "The last time I asked a certified diabetes educator about that, she laughed and gave me a weird look." Neither one of those responses is particularly encouraging.
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The only thing worse than having a medical issue laughed at,
is when it happens right after you state that someone was willing to have sex with you.
Sexually active diabetics are supposed to keep three things on their nightstands: condoms, a glucose meter, and sugar tablets. It's not particularly romantic to test your blood sugar right after orgasming, but it would be worse to fall unconscious immediately after a passionate lovemaking session (or during a passionate lovemaking session) and force your partner to call an ambulance to come collect your sex-stained body. Zach has also met severely undereducated people who think diabetes is transmitted sexually, so it's probably best to have your personal medical history spread out on a nightstand to get that conversation out of the way immediately.
But far more often than that, presumably, he has to deal with the fact that ...
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