Diabetes its Effects, Anti-Aging, Healing

Over 15 million Americans over the age of 60 have one form or another of Diabetes Mellitus. Most of these patients have what is called Type 2 , also called non-Insulin Dependant Diabetes Mellitus. In these type 2 patients, there is decreased sensitivity to Insulin at the receptor level.

At Garcia Facial Plastic Surgery Institute we developed a keen interest on diabetes after observing the abnormal healing process after surgery on diabetic patients. Definitely patients with diabetes or pre-diabetes condition resulted in having more difficulty healing after surgery than their non diabetic counterparts.

We concluded that certain lifestyle factors such as poor diet, obesity, smoking and lack of exercise, together with High Blood Pressure can worsen this condition more prominent in this population, having a detrimental effect on the skin and other organs.

This abnormal resistance for blood sugar to penetrate the cells and follow a normal metabolic path leads to certain harmful effects:.

         Impairment in the normal physiological process in all tissues including the skin  due to oxygen deprivation to the cells that can not utilize glucose.

         Increased production of harmful free radicals with damage to DNA.

           Lack of production of of needed biological substrates such as growth factors, antioxidants and enzymes.

           Creation of cross-links between proteins and tissues.

       The above described major deficiencies cause:

             Multi-organ damage including the skin due to crossed-linked proteins and free radicals.

            Impaired wound realing, increased susceptibility to infections due to impaired immune defenses.

The above multiple damage to different systems is believed to be one of the major causes of aging creating stiffness, loss of elasticity in the skin and joints and other loss of normal function in different organs. Here lays the role of treatment with antioxidants.

During aging, the body’s ability to produce and utilize its on antioxidants is impaired due to damaged genes and therefore the level of free radicals increased. This increase in free radical level leads into gene damage and therefore more free radials are generated perpetuating the cycle Diabetes causes similar effect by decreasing the antibody’s antioxidant level causing deficiency in tissue repair.

It is well known that increased sugar in the circulation causes reaction with amino acids in proteins creating cross-linkage which in turn decreases the flexibility of these tissues. This is called AGE (Advanced Glycation End-product). There are nutritional supplements that are known to prevent this effect. The typical example of this stiffness is present with Elastin which is not able to stretch and retract normally becoming stiff due to the presence of cross-links creating loss of tension, sags and wrinkles. The same effect happens in other tissues such as tendons and ligaments becoming weak, increasing tendency for tear.

Other symptoms created by this phenomenon is cardiovascular events, Impotence, Dementia, Eye disorders, Increase prevalence of cancer and skin problems such as brown spots and discoloration, thin skin and rashes.