When temperatures plummet, most people bundle up in thick sweaters, stay cozy indoors and stoke up on comfort food. But a provocative new theory suggests that thousands of years ago, juvenile diabetes may have evolved as a way to stay warm.
People with the disease, also known as Type 1 diabetes, have excessive amounts of sugar, or glucose, in their blood.
The theory argues that juvenile diabetes may have developed in ancestral people who lived in Northern Europe about 12,000 years ago when temperatures fell by 10 degrees Fahrenheit in just a few decades and an ice age arrived virtually overnight.
Archaeological evidence suggests countless people froze to death, while others fled south. But Dr. Sharon Moalem, an expert in evolutionary medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, believes that some people may have adapted to the extreme cold. High levels of blood glucose prevent cells and tissues from forming ice crystals, Dr. Moalem said. In other words, Type 1 diabetes would have prevented many of our ancestors from freezing to death.
and this is why I snow blow my driveway in shorts. Fuck the police.
Does this make me superior to the non-diabetics?
I feel awesome for this.
I prefer to be cold anyway. Awesome.
I love that we are so powerful.
This explains why after I was diagnosed I went a whole winter without wearing a jumper :)
(via tumblrbetics)
(Source: denyjon)
