Diabetes is a particularly malicious metabolic disorder. Circulatory problems and clogging can occur in virtually any part of the 60,000-mile-long blood vessel pipeline.
Cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients could include:
- blindness from clots in the arteries of the eyes
- kidney failure from kidney artery clogging, requiring dialysis
- gangrene from clogging of the small arteries of the toes
- heart attacks from clogging of the coronary arteries
- strokes from clogging of the brain arteries
The key to understanding cardiovascular disease in diabetics is understanding the similarity in the molecular structure of vitamin C and sugar (glucose) molecules. The cells of our blood vessel walls contain biological pumps specialized for pumping sugar and vitamin C from the bloodstream into the blood vessel wall, enabling normal function of the wall and preventing cardiovascular disease. Because of the high sugar concentration in the blood of diabetic patients, the sugar and vitamin C pumps are overloaded with sugars molecules. This leads to an overload of sugar and, at the same time, to a deficiency of vitamin C inside the blood vessel walls. Thus, vitamin C deficiency leads to a thickening of the walls throughout the blood vessel pipeline, which puts organs at risk of infarction.