How a Skinny Person Can Get Diabetes

Hmph! I thought I was safe because I am not obese. I have a normal BMI, and from time to time I work out. I drink a lot of water. But now I know that even a skinny person, thin as a rail, can get diabetes. How does that happen? Well let's take a look.

First, let's talk about why I am concerned. I am a female and I have diabetes running like a hungry man for a piece of cake on both sides of my families. My mother recently had a stroke when her sugar was at a whopping four hundred. Her mother died of a stroke and a heart attack just last year. She had diabetes too. My father's mother died from diabetes. So neither myself nor my sweet little brother nor my precocious little sister is safe from diabetes.

But hey, I thought I was safe because I'm thin. I felt that way just until I met a couple of skinny men who had diabetes and I wondered to myself, how in the world does a skinny person get diabetes. After all, type two diabetes is a result of the relationship between fat cells and insulin, right? Perhaps not all of the time.

See our bodies were made to break down the type of sugar that our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate. That was mostly composed of sugars from fruits. But today, we are washing down a pack of starburst with a big gulp; a star bucks carrot cake with a caramel latee all in the name of, "I'm young, thin and only overweight people get diabetes."

Wrong. There's a condition called prediabetes. That's when your doctor tells you your sugar is at level of about 120. That doesn't mean you have diabetes, but it means you're well on your way even if you are skinny.

So are you short on groceries? Think you can get by eating ramen noodles and the free doughnuts someone will hopefully bring in from your job? Did you overdo the cakes, brownies, and cookies for the holidays? Do you have a gallon of orange juice in your refrigerator right now? Did you feel a little more thirsty than normal this week? You may be well on your way to something. And you better watch out even if the scale reads a healthy 135lbs.

To prevent diabetes and prediabetes slow down on the carbs. And eat more protein and less processed sugar. It really does matter, even at a young age.