Diabetes and Cardiovascular Health

Diabetes is a chronic health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy. With diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use it as well as it should. When there isn’t enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream. Over time, that can cause serious health problems, such as heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease. People with diabetes are more likely to develop heart disease and have certain risk factors, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, that increase their chances of having a heart attack or a stroke. High blood glucose from diabetes can damage blood vessels and the nerves that control your heart and blood vessels. Over time, this damage can lead to heart disease. Adults with diabetes are nearly twice as likely to have heart disease or stroke as adults without diabetes. High blood pressure, high low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, smoking, and secondhand smoke exposure, obesity, unhealthy diet, and physical inactivity are leading risk factors for heart disease and stroke. Proper control and treatment of diabetes is critical as both the prevalence and economic burden of the disease continue to mount.