Sweet revenge

The warning signs of Diabetes have been well documented by scientists for eons now. The urge to urinate frequently, a thirst that is insatiable, that tell-tale tingling that doesn’t go away and of course, the stoic refusal to let go of a chance for revenge.

A research team located at the University of Kentucky has found links between people that are known to have Type-2 diabetes and lower thresholds of forgiveness. Results of the study show that lowered levels of glucose are not only detrimental to your health but can also gnaw away at your persona and make you more likely to hold a grudge against someone. So could it be that sugar really does sweeten us up, making us able to take the good with the bad more easily? Sugar was found to be the fuel the cerebral cortex needed to fend of thoughts of a vengeful nature, the sugar rush making subjects more tolerant and forgiving.

After drawing up a list of volunteers that had demonstrated diabetic symptoms, these subjects were put to the put using three different scales, the first being a ten item survey on the predisposition towards forgiveness, the second being the ability to pardon someone in fictional situations and the third being feedback on the degree to which they had forgiven someone who had recently done something hurtful in the recent past. This inquisition revealed a positive correlation between those with the symptoms and a demonstrated and avowed inability to forgive in real and fictional scenarios. To corroborate their views, these participants were then put to the test by being put in a computer game where they could either forgive negative behavior and cope with it or reject any form of reconciliation and become hostile. Again, those that had diabetic symptoms responded with negativity.

Thee results are not entirely representative since it gauges correlation as opposed to causality, but it is more than likely that lowered levels of blood sugar are responsible for these attitudinal viewpoints. All brain activity, including tasks requiring you to exercise a degree of control, need to be fuelled by glucose and those with Type-2 diabetes cannot efficiently produce glucose thus limiting their self-control. As control gets compromised, so too does your ability to stick to a diet conducive for diabetes and this cycle then perpetuates itself, manifesting itself with increased alienation in the social sphere. Get yourself some sugar then and stay sweet. Your friends will thank you for it.