Yvette Nicole Brown Explains How She Got Type 2 Diabetes While Filming ‘Community’

Yvette Nicole Brown is speaking out about her struggle with type 2 diabetes.

Brown appears on Sean Hayes and Dr. Priyanka Wali’s podcast “Hypochondriactor”, explaining how she gave herself “full-blown diabetes” while working on her show “Community”.

“I got diabetes, or gave myself diabetes, by eating a lot of donuts on the set of ‘Community’,” Yvette shared of the 16-hour-long days. “I spent a lot of time at the craft services table, and I watched myself get bigger and bigger. And if you watch the show, you can see me get bigger and bigger. And I got a pre-diabetes diagnosis maybe in season one, and then by season three it was full-blown diabetes.”

Dr. Wali reassured Brown that she doesn’t think “it’s people’s faults that they contract diabetes,” and that it’s society’s fault for encouraging people to eat sugar.

“We live in a society right now where one of the most addictive substances in the world is completely legal and socially accepted. I do believe sugar is the tobacco of our generation,” Dr. Wali said. “And so it’s not your fault that there were donuts lying around.”

Brown agreed that sugar is an “addiction,” saying: “I swear I would walk past the donuts and go, ‘You don’t have to eat five,’ and my body would go, ‘Yes, you do.’ So I can imagine that it calls you the way drugs call the people that are addicted.”

“I remember my skin got really dry,” Yvette went on to say of her symptoms. “Everything was just itchy. I was scratchy and itchy, and I couldn’t put enough lotion on, but I never lost weight, I gained weight, and was thirsty.”

She said of her diet now and how she deals with cravings, “Thankfully I’m not in a situation now where I have that much time on set, and I’m not walking by delicious donuts and cakes and whatever all day. I believe everything in moderation.”

She continued, “So I’m not someone that’s like, ‘I’m never going to have a piece of cake,’ but I don’t have a whole cake. And I don’t have a whole cake every day, or every week. And if I say, I want to go to Cheesecake Factory and I’m going to get this cheesecake, then I’ll make sure that I use the treadmill for an extra hour that day to try to burn off some of the sugar that’s now in my body, drink more water, and other simple things you can do.”