Before explaining how diabetes mellitus Causes polyphagia? here’s what polyphagia means. Poly means “a lot”; phagia means “to eat”. So polyphagia means to eat a lot or eating a lot.
When you have diabetes, you tend to eat a lot more than usual. You feel the need to eat more food, your meals become more frequent and you have lots of cravings for snacks.
Why Do People With Diabetes Get More Cravings?
You need energy for everything you do. Whether you’re running or just blinking your eyes, you need energy for all these activities. This energy comes from the food you eat.
The food you eat consists of a number of building blocks. These building blocks include sugars, proteins and fats. These building blocks are the basic sources of energy for your body. Among these building blocks, sugar is the most important. The bodies cells rely heavily on the sugar from your food.
When you eat something, the sugar from that food enters into your body. But, your body cannot use this sugar just like that. It needs an enzyme called “insulin” to breakdown this sugar into energy. Insulin is like a hammer that helps break sugar down to produce energy.
When you have diabetes, two things can go wrong. First, your body does not produce enough insulin. This is what happens in type 1 diabetes. Alternatively, your body produces insulin but the insulin does not work the way it is supposed to. It’s like putting diesel gas in a regular engine and the car cannot run like it is supposed to. This is what we call type 2 diabetes.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Since the body insulin is either low or not working properly, the body fails to turn glucose into energy. That’s when the body starts to run low on energy. It’s like an engine running low on gas. What do you do when a car engine runs out of gas? You refill it, of course! Same is true for the body.
People with diabetes who have low energy levels can end up eating more than usual. When a person is running low on energy the brain sends signals to the body informing you that “now is the time to eat”. Since the sugar from food is not getting converted into energy, you keep on eating to give the body tissues the required amount of sugar and energy craved.
Unfortunately, that is why people who have diabetes eat a lot. Keep in mind, in most cases there are ways to prevent eating too much. By eating properly you can help reduce cravings, be sure to ask your doctor or seek medical advice from a licensed practitioner about a proper diet that is suitable for you.