Mary Lincoln and the American "Sweet Tooth"

[Eva Elisabeth]

(07-29-2014 05:33 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  I have a cousin you was diagnosed with juvenile onset diabetes at age 13, and he had to give himself insulin injections several times a day until his death last December at age 46. It's a merciless disease. You can go into coma at any time.

I agree it's likely that Mary had developed diabetes (type II) and this, since untreated, had its share in her death or maybe caused it.

Toia, (I know I will regret this post) you cannot compare diabetes type I (juvenile diabetes) & II.

Diabetes I is an autoimmune disease, resulting from self-destruction of the insulin producing cells in the pancreas. The cause for this disiase is still unknown, it is not a lifestyle disease, and this disease requires way more management efforts, restrictions and planning in everyday life, and mostly it still causes increasingly more damage over the time. Contrary to type II, diabetes I always requires use of insulin, in case of mismanagement you easily can go into coma, and untreated it commonly leads to fatal coma.

Usually nowadays you wouldn't go into coma due to diabetes II. Diabetes II is, though a certain genetic disposition increases the risk to develop it, entirely a lifestyle disease, caused by obesity, diet, and lack of physical exercise (leading to a relative lack of insulin and/or insulin resistance). Nowadays, if treated, including a change in lifestyle, it is by no means as "merciless", severe and serious as diabetes I. Of cause, Mary didn't know what her weight and (probably) surgary diet could cause (and most likely did cause), plus her physical labor in later years was most likely very little.