Archaeological Dig Reveals Causes—and Possible Cures—for Diabetes Epidemic

Indian Country Today Media Network ^ | 8-23-2012 | Eisa Ulen Richardson

[Renfield]

The future health of Natives may lie in the scatological remains of the past—a vanguard study of ancient excrement has offered fresh new ways of thinking about the prevalence of diabetes among Native people of the American Southwest.

Karl Reinhard, a professor of forensic science and environmental archaeology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has studied the fossilized feces, or coprolites, of ancestral Pueblo people and documented typical Pueblo diets prior to European contact. He has determined that the overwhelming prevalence of diabetes among Pueblo descendants may stem from their radical departure from the healthy diets of their progenitors. According to his research, high diabetes rates might be caused by what Native Americans eat—not by how much they eat.....

[Renfield]

Ping

[EggsAckley]

Your link is bizarre. Looks like a grad student’s notes or something. Nothing related to the above, as far as I can tell.

That’s a shame. I really wanted to learn more. Can you find a better link?

[FreedomPoster]

His link worked fine for me.

Here it is again, try this.

If that doesn't work, I'd say the problem is on your end.

[ozzymandus]

I’ve seen these studies claiming to show how healthy Indians diets were before the evil white man. They always seem to omit the effects of alcoholism.

[RJS1950]

When will he be forced to return and rebury the sacred relics (coprolites)? Afterall, the general consensus for years has been that anywhere an indian craps is sacred ground.

[MeganC]

Native Americans ate crap before the Europeans came along. They were nomadic hunters and gatherers and they ate whatever they happened to get their hands on. And these glassy-eyed liberal researchers have a nagging tendency to mistake a starvation diet for a healthy diet.

Starving people generally have low rates of diabetes.

That Native Americans have high rates of diabetes and obesity is a cultural thing as most of them are culturally similar to ignorant white people who also have high rates of obesity and diabetes.

To quote Ron White: “You can’t fix stupid.”

[count-your-change]

Ah...the happy, healthy natives were corrupted by the white man.

Sounds like there is a lot of holes in the thrifty genes theory.

[fremont_steve]

Your statement about the people in this study being nomadic simply doesn’t apply here.

He is talking about the “Pueblo” dwellers, and other tribes in/near the Grand Canyon. These folks lived in permanent settlements for hundreds of years, and grew crops, i.e. CORN, along with gathering & hunting.

[poobear]

Yep, they may have been thin with no diabetes but died before they were forty due to malnutrition.

Liberals’ dream. Just think of the SS savings!

[wideawake]

Their diets weren't intentionally healthful, obviously. They did indeed whatever they could get their hands on.

What that meant in practical terms is that they ate a lot of seeds, wild herbs, wild fruits, rabbits, squirrels and deer.

These foods are not very calorie-dense and have very little saturated fat and sugars, but lots of lean protein and fiber.

Europeans spent centuries raising cattle and cultivating plants to be pleasant and flavorful - which means that they are high in fat or high in sugar and very calorie-dense.

I would also point out that there is a link between inefficiency in metabolizing alcohol (fermented sugars) and inefficiency in metabolizing sugars.

In Native Americans this would point to another factor for diabetes-proneness.

[wideawake]

The corn they raised and the corn we eat today have very different nutrient profiles.

[TheThirdRuffian]

“Native Americans ate crap before the Europeans came along. They were nomadic hunters and gatherers and they ate whatever they happened to get their hands on.”

Actually, the Plains Indians were, by far, the tallest and healthiest people in the world during the 1800s.

They had a plentiful diet of protein and the nomadic nature kept parasites and disease down.

http://www.albionmonitor.com/0105b/plainsindians.html

[dhs12345]

“Starving people generally have low rates of diabetes.”

And there are other health benefits, too. When an organism is under stress it will produce chemicals to protect itself. Those chemicals have the potential for extending life, if the organism doesn't die or is not severely injured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Oh this is utter hooey. The people of the southwest didn’t have much diabetes because they spent a lot of their time starving and walking.

I’ll cite the Pima tribe of Arizona. Typically they lived on a diet of 800 to 1200 calories a day, for many generations. Their livers adapted to a starvation diet and became very efficient. But if you give a modern Pima a typical western diet, they bloat up, become obese and soon develop diabetes.

It is comparable to the lack of resistance that Indians have to alcohol. Europeans and their descent have been drinking alcohol for several thousand years. Plenty of them can suck down a lot before they even get tipsy.

But give an Indian a couple of beers and he is blotto. No resistance to alcohol at all.

Recent research has even shown that in many cases type-1 diabetes can be reversed by subjecting the diabetic to a hospital supervised agony diet of 800 calories a day for over a month.

Same deal, near starvation. It’s good for you.

[bboop]

Yes, they omit the effects of alcoholism and fry-bread tacos.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Renfield. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[fremont_steve]

No argument. My only beef was that the tribes in this study weren’t nomadic. They were pretty unique within North American Indian tribes because of that attribute.