Chapter 2 A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Temperature Go Down Diabetes The author first explains what diabetes is and how it affects people Its important to understand this because the chapter is over how diabetes could have been helpful to us many millions of years ago ID: 401899
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Slide1
Survival of the sickest
Chapter 2: A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Temperature Go DownSlide2
Diabetes
The author first explains what diabetes is and how it affects people.
It’s important to understand this because the chapter is over how diabetes could have been helpful to us many millions of years ago.
Diabetes today is considered pesky at best and fatal at worst, so how could it have ever helped us?Slide3
Tree frogs
The answer: tree frogs
A scientist found tree frogs that had literally frozen themselves.
They raised the blood sugar levels so high, their blood turned to mush instead of freezing.
They had released any and all excess liquid,
so
it doesn’t create shards that
cut or burst their veins.
The blood goes to the core, the most vital part of the body
.Slide4
Picture of frozen tree frogSlide5
How do tree frogs relate to us?
It is believed that having diabetes once helped in the frigid cold that the earliest humans faced.
Raising the blood sugar causes the blood to turn to
slush where it would
normally freeze,
which can stay in the veins, versus regular blood sugar levels which would cause ice shards in the veins.
Diabetics, even today, still tend to have a higher blood glucose level during the winter months. Slide6
But why freezing?
Freezing is kind of like hibernation of the entire body.
The body no longer needs to pump blood to sustain a normal body temperature because life functions no longer need to be carried out.
Freezing is easier and better for bodies that equipped for it.Slide7
Why did people want this trait?
Early people probably wanted diabetes because it might have helped them survive the horrid cold.
Most people with diabetes have descendants from Europe, where cold is no stranger.
Freezing prevented complications of cold, such as, hypothermia.
People today with type one diabetes probably descend from a long line of early humans with diabetes.Slide8
What does this mean for today?
Back in the day, diabetes was helpful, not harmful.
Even though today the opposite is true, diabetes still exists because it takes millions of year of environmental pressure to reverse this.
The general rule is that if it is hurtful now, it probably used to be pretty
helpful sometime ago.