The world’s largest diabetes study is out, and it has a big impact on the way we think about the disease.
The authors are comparing sugar, blood pressure and blood glucose levels from a variety of populations, and they have an interesting finding: the higher the blood sugar, the higher your risk of heart disease.
The study has also found that people with higher blood sugar levels have a higher risk of developing diabetes.
“We were able to identify individuals who were in the highest category of blood sugar in terms of blood glucose level, and we found that those individuals were at higher risk for diabetes,” said Michael Caudill, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard Medical School, and one of the study’s authors.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, focused on 6,898 adults aged 18 and older, from the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Ireland.
“The people who had the highest blood sugar and had the greatest risk for developing diabetes were those with the highest sugar level,” said Caudell.
The average blood sugar level in the group was 3,717 mg/dL.
“This was a fairly high level.
In fact, we expected people to have about 300 mg/dl or more of blood sugars, but that was what they had.”
The study also found people who drank more than 100 milligrams of sugar per day were at a higher likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.
The more sugar they consumed, the greater the risk.
Caudill and colleagues were also able to get some information on blood pressure.
They found that the more blood pressure you have, the more likely you are to develop diabetes.
People with a high blood pressure index were found to have the highest risk of diabetes.
A higher blood pressure level also increased the risk of hypertension, which is a condition in which the blood vessels that supply blood to the heart become clogged.
“There is a lot of evidence that high blood pressures, in particular hypertension, are associated with diabetes,” Caudll said.
“So we have been able to show that hypertension is associated with risk for type 2, and type 1, diabetes.”
While the study focused on sugar, other factors such as coffee, blood lipids, blood cholesterol and other risk factors also played a role.
“We did find that people who are high in sugar intake, but also people who have high blood sugar are at higher diabetes risk,” said Dr. Elizabeth Ramey, an assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health and a researcher who co-authored the study.
“I would argue that people that are more likely to have diabetes in general, but not just diabetes in diabetes, have a very high risk of having diabetes,” Rameys said.
“You know, we see a lot more obesity and hypertension in adults than we do in people who don’t have diabetes,” she added.
“When we look at all of the things that might be associated with a person having diabetes, like having a high sugar intake and having a history of hypertension and having some other factors, we are seeing a higher prevalence of type 2 in the general population.”
Researchers say there are some common risk factors that contribute to people with diabetes, including being overweight, high cholesterol, smoking, being physically active and high blood glucose.
“In general, diabetes is more prevalent in older people and among women, people who smoke and are overweight, and people who exercise a lot,” Rames said.
But there are other factors that can contribute to the development of diabetes that are not well known.
For example, people with a history or diagnosis of asthma, obesity, a history with diabetes or a history for cardiovascular disease are at an increased risk of getting diabetes, as are those with certain cancers.