Fluctuations in your blood sugar levels can lead to chronically high blood sugar levels. This condition is also known as insulin resistance. Type 2 diabetes, a severe case of insulin resistance, can lead to nerve damage. If your nerves are damaged, you may experience internal body tremors, twitches and cramps.
Blood Sugar Fluctuations
If you frequently consume an excess of foods high in refined carbohydrates, such as sugar, white bread, white rice and white pasta, you can cause your blood sugar, or glucose, levels to fluctuate. Refined carbohydrates quickly convert to glucose in the intestinal tract. When the glucose enters the bloodstream, it causes a spike in your blood sugar levels. The pancreas responds by secreting a large dose of insulin, a hormone that informs the cells when glucose is available in the bloodstream. The large dose of insulin stimulates the cells to absorb the glucose quickly. Once the cells have absorbed the glucose, blood glucose levels plummet and hunger pangs set in.
Insulin Resistance
If you allow your blood glucose levels to fluctuate for an extended time period, you can cause the insulin receptors on the cell surfaces to tire out and gradually shut down. Cells with defective insulin receptors cannot absorb glucose. But they still need energy. So your body breaks down muscle and fat tissue to produce energy. Meanwhile glucose continues to accumulate in the bloodstream.
Neuropathy
The majority of cells in your body need insulin to absorb glucose. Cells in the retina, kidneys and peripheral nerve tissue, however, can absorb glucose without insulin. Peripheral nerve cells are nerve cells that are outside your brain and spinal cord. When your blood sugar is high, large quantities of glucose enter the peripheral nerve cells. Some of it converts into energy. The rest converts into sorbitol, a large molecule too big to exit the nerve cells. When sorbitol accumulates in the nerve cells, it results in cell damage.
Types of Neuropathy
There are three types of peripheral nerve cells -- muscular, sensory and autonomic. Muscular nerve cells control the motion of the muscle groups that are under your voluntary control, sensory nerve cells submit information from the senses to the brain, and autonomic nerve cell control processes that are not under your voluntary control, such as digestion, breathing and heartbeat. Damage to muscular nerve cells may result in internal body tremors, twitches and cramps.
References
- "Circulation"; Diagnosis and Management of the Metabolic Syndrome; Scott M. Grundy, et al.; September 2005
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: Peripheral Neuropathy Fact Sheet
- "Journal of the American Society of Nephrology"; Contribution of Polyol Pathway to Diabetes-Induced Oxidative Stress; S.S.M. Chung, et al.; August 2003
- National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse: Insulin Resistance and Pre-Diabetes
