Real Talk

Double Whammy: When Both Sides Of The Family Have Diabetes

by Kevyn Gohu
July 1, 2025

So, what happens when both sides of the family have diabetes? Does it mean getting it is inevitable?

Most families usually have one or two members of the family having diabetes. Usually, it’s only one side of the family. So, what happens when it’s both sides of the family having diabetes? It would have been easy to dismiss it as just “poor lifestyle choices.” However, a good look at those afflicted and how diabetes hasn’t skipped a generation kind of makes it concerning. After all, the story of how they got diabetes seemed to follow a pattern.

Diabetes has genetic and environmental components

Growing up, it wasn’t abnormal for me to hear the word diabetes. Both of my grandfathers had it, and it was normal to chastise them for eating something that had sugar. At first, everyone simply joked about it. There was this underlying notion that they weren’t going to change the way they ate anyway. Unfortunately, my grandfather on my mother’s side passed away due to pneumonia. However, my grandfather on my dad’s side (my dad’s father) currently has round-the-clock care with insulin injections and maintenance medicine.

Growing up, I already saw how diabetes changed lives. The majority of the money goes into medicines, emergency room services, a retainer’s fee for a nurse, and diabetic-friendly food. Moods were erratic, but they were manageable so long as people watched their words, oh-so-carefully.

Seeing that both sides had it, it wasn’t hard to convince me that diabetes did have a genetic component. However, it was only after further research that genetics mostly contributed to making one more susceptible to getting diabetes. The rest of the damage supposedly came from “poor eating choices.”

“Poor eating choices?”

Because of this, my mom would always warn me about my sugar intake, saying that the family had a sweet tooth. Although we weren’t into candy, chocolate, and soda (though that’s more of a personal thing), we loved juice. Fruit juice of any flavor, save for the ones that looked like something out of AXN’s Fear Factor — that meant anything having a goppy green color and would slide in the glass like sludge.

Oh, and our sweet tooth worsened when milk tea began to trend. It became a challenge among the younger ones on how much milk tea we could drink with 100% sugar without throwing up.

But what could we do? We were all stressed by something. High-calorie foods gave us the energy to deal with it. Work was usually the main culprit. Whether it was running a plastic-manufacturing factory for milk scoops and margarine containers, crunching numbers at the bank and stocks, or working as a rank-and-file employee in a company, all of these needed energy. That’s without parenting for the energy accounting, and we all know that demands a lot too!

With 90% of the body and brain running the business, the remaining 10% was to find food. The food didn’t matter so long as it gave everyone the energy to run and move, because there was always something that needed to be done.

Even the healthy ones got hit

So, we tried everything to get a consistent supply of energy, including the usual healthy selections like rice, bananas, and mangoes. When they didn’t match up, we turned to caffeine: chugging energy drinks and coffee. That’s why the family has running jokes like: “Our blood type is caffeine,” or “I want my coffee black, like my soul.” We’ve probably heard every coffee-related joke because of how much we take.

Unfortunately, even my dad, a former athlete who maintained a healthy lifestyle, got hit with diabetes. The doctors blamed the bananas; the problem was that my dad couldn’t just go on one piece. He needed one bunch to get through the morning. By noon, all that energy was gone, and he would get hungry. His metabolism was inhuman by normal standards. He was no drinker or smoker but had suffered Hepatitis B prior, due to an infected needle used in a dental procedure.

From there, problems cropped up one after the other. The diabetes had opened the floodgates for all sorts of infections and issues.

“Live like a diabetic.”

It’s not easy living with diabetes, especially in the Philippines. Most food is either sweet or salty, and healthier alternatives are usually priced higher. That’s assuming one has a normal metabolism; what if the metabolism one has is just incredibly fast? Carbohydrates like rice and noodles are the cheapest typical stomach staller (or what we know as pantawid gutom), but they’re not the healthiest thing to eat either.

With diabetes on both sides, I figured the best way to go around it was to assume I already had it. Drop the processed sugar, and whenever there is any, burn it as fast as one possibly can with exercise or household chores. If there’s an option for stevia (or bring your own), then take it. For vegetables, grab from the wet markets or the cheap ones like pechay baguio or kangkong. And for more protein, chicken is the usual. Those with allergies to chicken can try fish.

The problem with going sugar-free is that it means really carving out the time in one’s schedule to find ways to reverse the condition and to risk oneself in testing the proposed diet. While there’s a science to it, it’s not completely exact, as all case studies are different.

So if the family already has a history of diabetes, best to get checked and start living as if you have it. Diabetes, in the most extreme cases, can kill with nerve damage and gangrene. It’s no pretty sight.