If perception is reality?

OK admission time, I used to think that all people with type 2 had caused their own problem. I had great deal of sympathy for type 1 diabetics(I'd taught a few children with it) but very little for type 2. When I was diagnosed in my 50s and the doctor told me I had type 1, I was amazed, yet at the same time secretly relieved that I hadn't done this to myself. At diagnosis I was very thin, and I thought I ate a good diet but there have been times when I've been a bit overweight . The day I came out of hospital, one of the first people I met said 'you must have been eating too much rich food', I launched into a defensive explanation as to why I was't like that.
A few years later, contact with many type 2 diabetics on forums has changed my opinion. I now realise that the idea that overeating causes, weight gain causes type 2 is oversimplistic and I hope that I have more understanding. So I suppose education does help put things into perspective but it doesn't have to come from a formal source.
It was actually quite difficult to word this answer so I hope that I've said what I mean

My aqua exercise class was discussing just this this morning. 2 of us are T2 diabetics. though by no means slim, we are not the fattest 2 by a long way.
If T2 is caused by eating too much and getting overweight (if not obese ) how does this account for the majority of oerweight and obese people who are not diabetic and what about he skinny ones who are? I sat drinking my coffee this morning, sitting next to a much fatter person, who was eating 2 YES 2 sticky buns. I also refused the kind offer of a bit of chocolate chip cookie from another who admitted that on BMI rating, she's "Morbidly obese" she's a very short round person of "pleasing appearance". She's not the other diabetic either.
I think that the weight gain that most of us experience is part of metabolic syndrome, which often develops into T2.
I have a T2 mother and had a T2 grandmother. I've also gone through several other endocrine system problems. which I think were caused by the Streptomycin that was used to treat my Osteomyelitis, when I was 13. It was a choice of that or my life and they weren't sure of my life.
I do wonder if the thin T2s don't go through metabolic syndrome. Perhaps their blood pressure and cholesterol are not raised.

My aqua exercise class was discussing just this this morning. 2 of us are T2 diabetics. though by no means slim, we are not the fattest 2 by a long way.
If T2 is caused by eating too much and getting overweight (if not obese ) how does this account for the majority of oerweight and obese people who are not diabetic and what about he skinny ones who are? I sat drinking my coffee this morning, sitting next to a much fatter person, who was eating 2 YES 2 sticky buns. I also refused the kind offer of a bit of chocolate chip cookie from another who admitted that on BMI rating, she's "Morbidly obese" she's a very short round person of "pleasing appearance". She's not the other diabetic either.
I think that the weight gain that most of us experience is part of metabolic syndrome, which often develops into T2.
I have a T2 mother and had a T2 grandmother. I've also gone through several other endocrine system problems. which I think were caused by the Streptomycin that was used to treat my Osteomyelitis, when I was 13. It was a choice of that or my life and they weren't sure of my life.
I do wonder if the thin T2s don't miss out on metabolic syndrome. Perhaps their blood pressure and cholesterol are not raised.

When first diagnosed type 1 my teacher actually thought you got diabetes by eating too much and being overweight ( I weighed about 3st at the time). I think that some of us have a predisposition to diabetes but if you look at the media whenever they do a section on diabetes it always has pictures of overweight people eating the wrong food its no wonder some peope have that perception media and the medical profession say it so they think it must be the reality !

It's pretty typical of clueless Type 1s and clueless journalists, and all too many clueless medics, who have zero understanding of insulin resistance or genetics. (I have to say that most Type 1s aren't that clueless, the same is not true of the other two classes)

I was flirting with someone just the other day, she must have weighed 100 lbs wringing wet. Her mother had just gone into hospital to have some toes amputated, and yes she also was Type 2.

20% of Type 2s are not obese. 80% of obese people are not diabetic. Some numbers you might care to educate him with.

In my case it's definitely familial and the skinnier we are the worse lipids and BP we seem to get. I suspect we put excess carbs into the bloodstream as lipids but lack the gene which stashes the lipids as body fat - the fatter people in the family generally have better numbers. Not eating the excess carbs is the best plan I have found, if there's one dietary factor which is correlated in time with the "epidemics" of both diabetes and obesity it is the "Heart Healthy" diet. Which even more curiously appears to be correlated with ever increasing levels of cardiovascular disease, and not just in us genetically predisposed ones.