Today 37 million Americans have diabetes according to the Centers for Disease Control and 90-95% of them are type 2. But what is the cause? Turns out tobacco is highly correlated with type 2 diabetes. Huh? Actually, there are a number of surprising correlations with type 2 diabetes.

For example, based on recent research another one of the “causes” of type 2 diabetes is statins. Not sure that that gets to the heart of the issue though. It may be more helpful to look at why so many Americans are on statins in the first place. In other words, what causes high cholesterol? Besides the obvious, i.e. damaged food, high cholesterol is “caused” by eating too much sugar, too much damaged fat, drinking alcohol, and smoking tobacco. Ah, ha! The tobacco connection!

But tobacco is not a food, you say. How does it drive diabetes? For starters, tobacco leaves are 30% sugar. Wow! If tobacco is 30% sugar, no wonder it drives diabetes. Wonder if that also makes it more addicting? In fact, tobacco is genetically engineered to increase the production of starch and sugars. In addition, because it is a GMO crop, it has been sprayed with Glyphosate, an obesogen. Bottom line for our purposes here is the fact that a plant that we smoke contains such high levels of sugar and starch that it drives diabetes. 

Funny Fact: Tobacco actually was the very first GMO crop in the US. Today it is sprayed with insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and suckercides including Glyphosate and Trazine. OK, maybe that’s not funny. Because the upshot is that it is also a powerful carcinogen. 

Using my model below, we can see the progression of some of these problems as well as the connections. 

So to recap, both the diabetes, and the high cholesterol, are driven by too much sugar, damaged fats, alcohol, and tobacco. Likewise, obesity (largely the result of food pollution) is also a contributor. It too is driven by too much sugar, damaged fats, foods with obesogens and alcohol. I am noticing a trend here. All of these conditions have one thing in common, polluted foods. 

The good news is that the conditions are reversible in most cases if you treat the cause: lose the polluted foods; stop eating genetically engineered sugar, damaged fats, foods with obesogens, and pass on the alcohol. The Food Pollution Disorder Model is a framework for doing just that. If you have questions or comments I am the Eating Disorder Pro and I would love to hear from you.