{"id":3501,"date":"2025-10-28T18:52:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T22:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2025-10-28T18:52:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T22:52:20","slug":"diabetic-neuropathy-and-glucose-imbalance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/10\/28\/diabetic-neuropathy-and-glucose-imbalance\/","title":{"rendered":"Diabetic Neuropathy and Glucose Imbalance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During my time working in a neuroscience clinic, I met several patients living with diabetic neuropathy. Seeing them struggle with chronic pain, numbness, and balance issues made me wonder how something as small as a glucose molecule could have such a widespread effect on the body.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In class, learning about glycolysis, glycogen storage, and metabolic regulation helped me put what I had seen in the clinic into the context of biochemistry. I realized that when neurons experience chronic high glucose levels, oxidative stress and reduced ATP production can damage cellular membranes and interfere with ion transport. Over time, this makes it difficult for neurons to maintain proper signaling and leads to the gradual degeneration of peripheral nerves. This damage explains many of the sensory and motor symptoms associated with diabetic neuropathy. Understanding this link between metabolism and nerve function has helped me see how a biochemical imbalance can evolve into a complex neurological condition.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Being able to understand the biochemical background of diseases and illnesses has really helped me to understand the development of medications and approaches to treatment in a variety of illnesses.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During my time working in a neuroscience clinic, I met several patients living with diabetic neuropathy. Seeing them struggle with chronic pain, numbness, and balance issues made me wonder how something as small as a glucose molecule could have such &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/2025\/10\/28\/diabetic-neuropathy-and-glucose-imbalance\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17926,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[349081],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17926"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/bc362\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}