Long before the individual becomes a full diabetic, because of these long hours of high blood glucose, the glucose starts to combine with various protein structures in the blood. Everything from blood cells, plateletts and vessel walls to various enzymes. These are now called glycoslated structures, and the really unfortunate part of this is that they can no longer function as they should. Let’s take the red blood cells for example, when they become glycoslated the amount of oxygen they can carry is greatly reduced. This in turn means the cells of the body become deficient in enough oxygen to produce their normal amount of energy. Why? Because those mitochondria energy factories I have been referring to must have plenty of oxygen in order to convert all that glucose to ATP. Once the cell oxygen level drops, acids begin to form in the cell, and because it still needs energy, it starts fermenting these acids in order to create energy. Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr. Otto Warburg discovered that fermentation of acids for energy instead of respiration of oxygen is the chief characteristic common to ALL cancer cells. The loss of oxygen in the cell due to glucose crowding it out, is one of the key reasons that people with chronic high blood sugar have a much higher rate of cancer.