Do you have sugar in your urine? This can be a sign of type 2 diabetes.
By learning how it got there, you can do something about it before it's too late.
Learn 7 causes of sugar in the urine and what you – as a man or a woman – can do about it.
More...
If you do a urine test and discover that it contains a lot of sugar, it can come as a bit of a shock. You had no symptoms of sugar in your urine. So you couldn't have known.
Perhaps your doctor was unable to tell you immediately how it could have happened, and you got worried. High sugar levels in your urine can indicate diabetes, and that is not a pleasant prospect.
Purpose of this article
You can have a lot of glucose in your urine for several reasons. If you know the cause is, then you and your doctor can tackle it together. In this article, I will discuss 7 possible causes, each one with tips on what you can do about it.
How is it possible to have too much sugar in your urine?
You go to the doctor. He advises you to take a test that measures how much glucose you have in your urine.
Or you've been naughty and bought a test online that lets you measure glucose (or ketones) in your urine yourself. And this is how you find out that you have too much.
Naturally, you ask yourself why this is a bad thing.
Now, I assume you're smart enough to discuss this with your doctor, who may do some follow-up tests to find out what the actual cause is – because I can't look into your body from behind my computer. You need a doctor for that.
However, if you have diabetes because a test shows that you do, and you still have sugar in your urine despite your efforts to do something about it...
... then I have several answers for you.
The causes of sugar in the urine of type 2 diabetes patients
If you haven't yet been diagnosed with diabetes, you should be aware the glucose in your urine could have a number of other causes, none of which have anything to do with diabetes. Confusion on this issue is not a good plan.
If you assume that it's something other than diabetes, you can live with type 2 diabetes for years without really knowing it.
But if you diagnose yourself as having diabetes without knowing for sure, you may overlook one of the following possible causes:
In all cases, it's vital to identify the exact cause of the glucose in your urine. This can only be done properly by a doctor. And until the doctor confirms that you do indeed have diabetes, increased glucose in your urine is not conclusive proof.
Having said that... let's continue:
Assuming you have previously been diagnosed with diabetes and found out that there is more glucose in your urine than you hoped for, then this was caused by blood sugar being too high. Now, the question is: why is your blood sugar level higher than expected?
Cause #1: You eat too many fast sugars
Think of products such as:
All these foods cause your blood sugar to rise quickly. If you have diabetes, your body is unable to make enough insulin (or is not sensitive enough to the insulin it does make) to absorb all that glucose.
The result is the glucose remains in your bloodstream and eventually gets excreted. But, in the meantime, it has already caused a lot of damage to your body. And it might, therefore, be too late to repair it.
You do not want to eat too much of these products
It is possible that the types of sugar you eat are absorbed more slowly than so-called fast sugars; nevertheless, they are still extremely harmful to your body. Think of products such as:
Eating bananas all day will have some very unpleasant consequences on your blood sugar levels. And I haven't even started on the pasta and bread, which are even worse.
Cause #2: You skip vegetables
Vegetables are magical products. They are so healthy that they are the only food group that scientists don't fight over. Because just about every piece of research shows that vegetables make you healthier.
This is because they are full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, which you may not find anywhere else. (and certainly not in cookies and chips)
Also, vegetables are especially useful for you if you have diabetes. They are full of fiber, which ensures that the sugar in your stomach is broken down and absorbed more slowly.
Thanks to vegetables, sugars that would usually enter your bloodstream at once, are now absorbed bit by bit.
As a result, you have fewer sugar spikes.
If you don't eat vegetables, then it is tough to be healthy. All those sugars are broken down and absorbed much faster than is good for you. This increases your blood sugar level and can result in too much glucose in your urine. Which is likely to require additional treatment.
Cause #3: Too little protein
Why do people eat more sugar than is good for them?
One reason is that they don't eat enough meat, fish, or eggs. Your brain needs a strict amount of protein. If you don't get the right amount, you will continue being hungry.
When there's little protein in your diet, you stay hungry and keep on eating.
In most cases, that's unhealthy . If you usually eat lots of carbs and sugar, then, unfortunately, that's what you'll continue to do.
There are some proteins in the average carb or sugar-rich product. But not many.
This makes it so easy to overeat sugars if you're hungry. Your body doesn't care much about the sugars themselves – it's merely trying to ingest more protein.
Conversely, you can prevent this by providing your body with enough protein. This quickly solves the problem. The best way to do it is described in this article.
Cause #4: You eat the wrong carbohydrate sources
Earlier, I mentioned the fast sugars you get in things like cookies and sweets, and the slightly slower sugars in bread, pasta, etc.
Unfortunately, the crooked food industry has found several ways to transform foods from the second category into those in the first.
Through these processes, they can turn relatively slow sugars into quick sugars without you noticing. This works in their favor because:
The most important example is white bread.
The flour they use to make white bread is milled and filtered until there is hardly any fiber left. And fiber helps to slow down the absorption of sugars in a significant and effective way. This is the case with wholewheat bread.
Beware
Thus, white bread causes a much faster increase in your blood sugar level, which can cause dangerously high values. And if your blood sugar level is too high, a test is highly likely to show sugar in the urine.
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Cause #5: You are overweight
The more overweight you are, the greater the chances of finding a lot of sugar in your urine.
Too much (belly) fat, sitting all day, and eating lots of sugar is a recipe for developing pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.
Cause #6: You are using medication that causes diabetes
Many types of drugs change the way your body deals with glucose and insulin. The two most important ones are:
With Prednisone, your body becomes less sensitive to insulin, which results in diabetes-like symptoms. After the Prednisone treatment, the symptoms can linger, leaving you even worse off.
Lithium is a mineral that occurs naturally in drinking water. In small amounts it is healthy, in large amounts it is a medicine.
For example, it is used to treat bipolar disorder because it helps to stablize the patient's mood.
Lithium in large doses can have harmful side effects.
It can make the kidneys work less efficiently, causing you to develop diabetes-like symptoms. It also makes you thirsty, which will have you reaching for the first thing you can find to quench your thirst. Unfortunately, this will often be a sugar-rich beverage.
Talk to your doctor if you are taking these medicines or have taken them before and found high sugar levels in your urine. A urine-test on its own is not enough to determine whether or not you have diabetes. Other tests are necessary if you want to get a definitive answer.
Cause #7: You're not getting enough exercise
As I mentioned earlier, three things – obesity, fast sugars, and doing hardly any exercise – virtually guarantee that you will develop diabetes. And the latter of the three should never be underestimated.
The human body is not made to remain motionless all day long. After half an hour of sitting, your metabolism has already started slowing down.
And not moving will cause your body to retain all the sugars you ate.
Of course, obesity and little activity are linked. People who are more overweight have less desire to exercise, and people who hardly exercise become overweight.
Fortunately, you don't have to become a marathon runner to get rid of your excess weight. Doing any sports will guard against getting sugars in your urine (or reverse the process). Even one short 15-minute walk each day can make a difference. Basically, try NOT to sit on your fat behind all day.
The Diabetes-Free Secret
So, now you know the 7 most common causes of sugar in your urine. I've already given you one or two tips on what you can do about it. But I have something that I'm sure will help you more.
It has recently been discovered that it is possible to reverse type 2 diabetes. And everything you need to do this can be found in your local grocery store.
You can reverse type 2 with one powerful principle. It's something I call "The Diabetes-Free Secret." Several pages that I've written about this secret will change your life forever. You will learn:
Enter your e-mail address below and I will send you the E-book for free.
Greetings,
Ben Kuiper
PS: Do you have sugar in your urine? What did you do about it? Leave a comment below