Gestational Diabetes Chapter 2

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Temperature go Down (Chapter II): a. Climate change may be one of the causes of diabetes. Diabetes is abnormal levels of glucose in the bloodstream. There are three types of diabetes: Type 1, Type 2, and Gestational. Type one diabetes is when the body does not produce enough insulin. This results in high blood sugar, because the body needs insulin (a hormone produced by the pancreas) to remove excess glucose in the bloodstream. Type 1 requires constant insulin injections into the bloodstream. Type 2 diabetes doesn’t require insulin injections as often, it requires constant watch of diet, exercise, and other daily habits. Gestational diabetes is a kind of diabetes that occurs in pregnant women. This happens because the fetus is pulling all the sugars out of the mother’s blood stream leaving her with drastically low blood sugar levels.

Now this national health problem may be partially caused by cooler climate changes. In other words, the Younger Dryas, (a period of violently cold temperatures) could have caused us as humans to gain adaptations. If humans went into the Younger Dryas, and we are still her now, that means somehow, we survived through all the cold temperatures. One main thing that helped us is brown fat. Brown fat is a type of fat we develop after enduring longer periods of time in the frigid cold. This fat helps us stay warm and keeps us from shivering as much and wasting our energy. As we are gaining this brown fat, we still need other ways to fight off the cold, so our bodies used our glucose to our advantage. Sugar is a type of antifreeze, so if our body produces more, it can help us keep our temperatures higher. This all explains why those diagnosed with diabetes normally are diagnosed in the colder