Long-term high blood sugar can cause damage to nerves and blood vessels, reducing blood flow and interfering with your body’s normal healing process. Resulting inflammation triggers excess production of proteins such as collagen and other tissue components, potentially leading to the formation of fibrous plaques in the penis.
In addition, more sugar (glucose) in your bloodstream promotes the formation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), compounds that build up in tissues and increase oxidative stress, inflammation, and fibrosis, the thickening and scarring of connective tissue.
“The higher the glucose and the longer the time that it spends high like that, the more likely you’ll get development of those AGEs,” says Landon Trost, MD, a urologist specializing in Peyronie’s disease in Orem, Utah, and president-elect of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America.
Dr. Trost adds that AGEs can attach to proteins such as collagen and fibrin and reduce flexibility in collagen-rich tissue in the penis, causing worse Peyronie’s symptoms.
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