Diabetes has always been a kind of medical complication where you might have taken precautionary measures to make sure you don’t have one and when it strikes you, there’s nothing you can do except trying every ways possible to prevent it from becoming worse. So, what actually causes diabetes? Until now, researchers have not been able to pinpoint the exact causes of diabetes. There are of course many risk factors but there’s none of them which is severe enough to cause diabetes of their own.
So, it is sufficient to say that there are actually risk factors, not definite causes of diabetes.

There are many risk factors or which you can say, causes of diabetes. We will look at a few causes which are more prominent among diabetic patients. One cause of diabetes is that diabetes may be hereditary in the family. In a family, if the parents have diabetes, the children have 25% risk of having diabetes themselves. The risk will of course be increased if both parents have a history of diabetes in the family. In this case, the family has better be aware of their own family background and as it may seem ‘unavoidable’, it is better to take precautionary measures that may serve to delay the disease.

Another prominent cause of diabetes is obesity. Obesity is normally linked to type 2 diabetes although it can also be taken in general. For people having obesity, their fat distribution is more than the body can take. The fat causes insulin to not function properly and this easily leads to cells’ resistance to insulin. Obesity can also be linked to sedentary lifestyle where a person may be a couch potato, eating every snacks and soda drinks possible without any physical activity except maybe walking to and fro from the fridge. Sedentary lifestyle causes more sugar to be taken in by the body and there’s not enough insulin produced to process the glucose.

Age is also a dangerous risk factor of diabetes. As people get older, their organ and bodily functions start to deteriorate, as with the pancreas. As pancreas’ functions deteriorate, insulin cannot be produced fast enough to cope with the surge of insulin. Age as one of the causes of diabetes can be seen where 80% of diabetes cases occur after 50 years.

Lastly, poor diet is also a cause that is usually linked to diabetes. Talking about poor diet, a person may have a high intake of fat and cholesterol and low intake of fibres. High intake of fat and cholesterol can easily cause obesity which in turn can lead to cell resistance to insulin or type 2 diabetes. Low intake of fibres such as fruits, vegetables and grain products causes the body to not discrete extra glucose out of the body and insulin produced is not enough to cope with it.

All of the above causes are just a few that are mostly associated with diabetes. There are also some other causes such as stress and virus infections. Further research should be made to make sure of the risk factors and taken early precautionary measures.