Diabetes in Equestria

[RainbowMau 291]

I'm not sure if you ever thought about this, but have you ever wondered how high could Equestria's diabetes rate be?

Almost all the food ponies eat are desserts, and they eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I guess the only exception so far was Twilight's daisies sandwich.

 

Or could it be that horses are more sugar-tolerant?

[HopeFul 122]

Horses do like to eat sugar cubes. lol

 

They DO eat a lot of sweets in Equestria.   Even when I see Spike eating gems, I think rock candy.

[Jeric 46,836]

I had to actually Google diabetes and insulin issues with ponies and horses. I found this. 

 

Looks like diabetes itself may be rare, but then again, I don't know if many horses that go all Homer Simpson over frosting like Pinkie Pie. Still with the presence of medical and surgical knowledge, we know Ponies get sick. This may be an ailment that exists in some form in Equestria

 

Pinkie ... you better take it easy girl 

 

[Fhaolan 4,468]

You can't get diabetes from over-indulgence in sugar. That's a very popular myth, but it's still a myth. Over-abundance of sugar will cause you to put on weight, and that can mess with your natural regulation of insulin, but it's not a direct correlation. There are other conditions that damage insulin regulation as well, but none of them are directly connected with eating too much sugar.

 

Plus, horse digestion, along with all herbivores, deal with excess sugar in a different way than humans. In order to process that volume of plant material, herbivores usually have one of several types of fermentation systems. Horses, specifically, have a cecum, a part of the intestine that we don't have, which converts excess sugar into alcohol in order to leach nutrients out of all that green stuff. So a big influx of fruit or raw sugar will cause your horse to literally get drunk. Which can be as dangerous to a horse as diabetes, as horses have surprisingly delicate digestive systems.

[Treble Bolt 1,122]

Well, considering Horses are eating are candy and sweets IRL horses never eat, they should all have gastrointestinal problems on top of insulin problems....maybe that explains the strange body colouration