Diabetes is a disease caused by excess insulin, not excess blood sugar. In other words, high blood sugar is a symptom, but not the root cause.

Insulin is the hormone responsible for reducing blood sugar. In order for insulin to work, our tissues have to be sensitive to its action; otherwise, tissues become resistant and insulin struggles to clear out sugar from the blood. As insulin resistance sets in, the first organ to stop responding to insulin is the liver, followed by the muscles and eventually fat. How does insulin resistance begin? The root of the problem is our diet.

After eating carbohydrates, the carbs break down into sugar, trigger the pancreas to produce insulin and are then stored in liver and muscles. However, there is a limit to the amount of sugar the liver and muscles can store. The easiest way to understand this is to think of your liver and muscles as small closets without much storage space. If sugar keeps coming in, the closet will quickly fill up.

It's about thresholds. If you consume more then your body can metabolize, there may be problems. But getting most of your calories from candy bars will not cause diabetes. If you cannot metabolize the sugars, you are at risk for diabetes.