Diabetes, Sugar and the Life Running on Pressure
A relative of mine was speaking to me about her diabetic husband – “He is really irresponsible. When you have diabetes, why do you eat all junk, fried food? And then you take an insulin injection”. Another diabetic man checks his blood sugar almost on a daily basis. He says the number has started to decide the mood of his day. If it is lower, he will feel like an achiever else, as if he is not.
One of the strange things about diabetes is that a number becomes more like a character certificate.
The fasting sugar, the post-meal sugar, the HbA1c, the weight, the waist, the doctor’s face when the report opens. These things do not remain medical information only. They begin to carry shame, fear, judgement, family history, self-blame and sometimes a quiet dread that says, “Now it has come to me also.”
In many Indian families, diabetes does not enter as a new diagnosis. It enters as inheritance. Father had it. Mother had it. Nana had it. Chacha lost his eyesight. Someone’s kidney was affected. Someone had to stop sweets completely. Someone kept saying they were fine until they were not.
So when the report changes, the person is not only reading sugar. He is reading a family prophecy. And almost immediately, the advice begins.
Stop rice. Stop sugar. Walk daily. Lose weight. Eat early. Do not eat mango. Do not eat sweets. Be disciplined. Control yourself. You should have listened earlier. At this age, you have to be careful. Now life will change.
If you are a diabetic or pre, before you read further, this is the only thing that I am going to say – continue your medical care. If your sugars are high, please do not treat this as only emotional work. Blood sugar affects the whole body and has to be taken seriously. That is it. Now let’s continue.
The usual diabetes conversation is actually a bit too narrow. It looks at food, weight, reports and compliance but rarely looks at the life being lived. As if diabetes proves that the person enjoyed too much, ate too much, relaxed too much, indulged too much, and now the body is presenting the bill.
That is usually not the full truth.
Many people with diabetes have not lived excessively indulgent lives. Most have lived the opposite. They have lived controlled lives. Responsible, pressured lives. Lives where they kept doing what had to be done, kept producing, kept providing, kept adjusting, kept postponing rest, kept swallowing fear, kept calling pressure normal. All of it gets carried quietly because there is no acceptable place to put it.
And then the entire conversation around their body becomes: control sugar.
But what was controlling them all these years?
A man may not say he is scared but busy. A woman may not say she is resentful but tired. Someone may not admit they feel unsupported. They eat something sweet at night after everyone has slept. Someone else may spend the whole day being strict with food and then lose control in the evening, not because they lack character, but because the day has taken more from them than they are willing to admit.
Sugar then becomes complicated. It is not just taste but reward, relief, softness, rebellion, compensation and sometimes the only easy pleasure left in a life that has become dry. The evening tea with biscuit. The sweet after dinner. The mithai kept for guests and eaten privately. The “bas ek” that becomes three because the body is not only asking for glucose. It is asking for something that feels like receiving.
This is where I do not like the usual moralising around diabetes because we are questioning their discipline. The truth is that most diabetics are not undisciplined. Some of them are over-disciplined in every other area of life. They control their anger, their words, their needs, their desires, their image and their fear. They do not shout or break down nor do they ask clearly. They manage, perform and keep moving. Then the only thing that seems uncontrolled is the sugar, and everyone attacks that.
The body becomes the accused.
From the Somashadow lens, diabetes tells the story where pressure became normal and nourishment became occasional. The person learned to function on urgency rather than satisfaction. They learned to produce more than they received. They learned to keep proving, providing, adjusting, performing or worrying. They learned to turn emotional pressure into action because action looked respectable and emotion looked like weakness.
This is especially common in men who have lived around duty. The provider identity becomes so strong that fear has nowhere to go. A man may be worried about money, relevance, ageing, his children’s future, his parents’ health, his own father’s diabetes, his own body beginning to change. But if he has been trained to be the one who handles things, then fear does not come out as fear. It becomes irritability, late-night eating, more work, more control, more silence, and sometimes a body that starts reporting what he has been refusing to feel.
In women, the same pattern often wears a different face. She may have spent years feeding everyone while barely sitting to eat her own food properly. She may know everybody’s preferences, medicines, timings, tiffins and digestion, while her own meals happen standing in the kitchen or between two demands. She may have spent decades making life more comfortable for others and then felt ashamed of wanting comfort herself. She may be the one who remembers the fruit for the child, the low-salt food for the father-in-law, the medicine for the husband, the fasting rule for the mother, and then eats whatever is left because by then she is too tired to make one more decision.
Then the report comes and tells her to control herself.
That is cruel actually. Someone who has been denied care is now asked to behave. A person who has been emotionally undernourished is told to stop craving. A life that has been running on responsibility is asked to become balanced through food charts and walking.
Now even healing becomes another performance. Eat correctly, walk, sleep, test and lose weight correctly. Be a good diabetic, do not slip, do not want and do not fail.
And the body, already tired of being controlled, becomes the next battlefield.
Blame is already everywhere in diabetes. Everyone and everything is blaming the person – family, weighing scale, even the doctor may unintentionally blame. And the person blames himself or herself before anyone else even starts.
But blame does not regulate sugar. Shame does not create safety in the body. Fear may force compliance for a short time, but it rarely creates a sane relationship with food, movement, medicine or rest.
A shamed person hides. They hide what they ate. They hide the report. They delay the test. They say the sugar is “thoda borderline” when it is not. They eat carefully in front of people and compensate in private. They promise discipline from tomorrow because that has become the imaginary place where the self will finally become pure.
This is why diabetes work cannot only be about control.
You may try to control the hunger, the sweets but the question to ask yourself is –
What am I really hungry for?
Not only food but other hungers. Hunger for rest without guilt, for being looked after, for being understood without giving a full explanation, for softness, for pleasure that does not hide and hunger for a life that is not always correcting you. A health that is not built on self-disgust.
If that question irritates you, it may be a good sign. Irritation is often more honest than another perfect plan.