Diabetes is a condition that leads to multiple chronic diseases. In medical training, we were taught that during risk prediction of cardiovascular disease, the condition of diabetes was weighted just as heavily as some of the other more direct risk factors like cardiovascular disease. The one compound that this condition is related to is the 6-carbon molecule known as glucose. This one molecule is not only responsible all types of cellular metabolism and production of the cell's energy currency or ATP. Without this energy rich compound, all cellular functioning would cease. However, ironically, the cells that are needing this glucose are not actually getting the fuel. Therefore, the reality is that, there is an "excess of glucose" within the bloodstream. However, the cells within the human body are in a constant starvation state.
Therefore it is important to remember that the three cardinal symptoms are polyuria, polydipsia, and polyphagia. The "poly" "phagia", or excessive hunger from Latin, is from the cells not getting enough "food" or "energy". Something similar is happening in the kidneys when there is an excess of glucose. In each of the millions of glomeruli-nephron (functional units of the kidneys), there is osmosis and excess removal of water. In fact, the name diabetes "mellitus" (sweet like honey) comes from the flavor of the urine being sweet versus the "other" type of diabetes which is diabetes "insipidus" or without flavor. This is as a result of other hormonal imbalances in antidiuretic hormone. I have seen this in the case of small cell lung cancer.
Understanding from a public health perspective, diabetes is connected to multiple chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease. My first major publication was letting people know about the "triple threat". According to the health belief model, a key way to understand disease is to characterize it as a threat. I published this paper with my doctoral chair, Dr. Raymond Panas.
Diabetes has also been shown to be associated with cognitive dysfunction. For instance,