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The National Institutes of Health through its National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has awarded $524,403 in taxpayer dollars to San Diego University to study diabetes and sexual orientation in women. “Type 2 diabetes (T2D) contributes to substantial morbidity, disability, and premature mortality in the U.S.,” the grant said. “Lesbian and Bisexual (LB) women may be at elevated risk for developing T2D because they are more likely than heterosexual women to experience Obesity and other risk factors linked with T2D such as cigarette smoking, Violence victimization, and depressive distress,” the grant added. …

The scientific community is not immune to politics, bias, and self-interest.The headline looks like a hoax — saturated fat does not cause heart disease — but it’s real. This news is more than just another example of changing health guidelines. It’s a cautionary tale about trusting the scientific consensus. For more than 50 years, the best scientific minds in America assured us that saturated fat was the enemy. Animal fat, we were instructed, was the chief culprit in causing obesity, Type II diabetes, and heart disease. Throughout my adult life, I have conscientiously followed the guidelines dispensed by the health...

Scientists led by Dr David Fairlie from the University of Queensland, Australia, have found abnormal amounts of an inflammatory protein called PAR2 in the fat tissues of overweight and obese rats and humans. PAR2 is also increased on the surfaces of human immune cells by common fatty acids in the diet. When obese rats on a diet high in sugar and fat were given a new oral drug that binds to PAR2, the inflammation-causing properties of this protein were blocked, as were other effects of the high-fat and high-sugar diet, including obesity itself.Zucker Rat, a pet rat that has developed...

Low-carb, high-fat diets outperformed low-fat diets for managing and even reversing type 2 diabetes, Diabetes.co.uk reported. According to an eight-year study conducted by the Second University of Naples, men and women who followed the low-carb, higher-fat Mediterranean diet were able to come off their diabetes drugs and reverse their diabetes symptoms more readily than people who followed a low-fat diet.In the study, two groups of diabetic men and women were instructed to either follow a low-fat diet or a low-carb, high-fat Mediterranean diet that was comprised of at least 30% fat.The results showed that the higher-fat, low-carb dieters were able...

The rates of five serious complications from diabetes -- heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, amputations and death -- have all dropped dramatically since 1990, a new U.S. government study shows. Heart attack rates have decreased nearly 70 percent in people with diabetes. Stroke rates have dropped by more than 50 percent, as have lower extremity amputations. Deaths from high blood sugar crises have fallen nearly 65 percent, and the risk of end-stage kidney disease is down 28 percent, according to the study. The biggest declines in diabetes-related complications have occurred for heart attack and stroke, especially among people aged 75...

"We find that there is a peptide hormone in the gut called GLP1 that increases the secretion of insulin only when the blood glucose is high. This effectively eliminates the risk of hypoglycemic shock. Another advantage is that GLP1 administration has been found to stimulate weight-loss. The hormone offers the promise of revolutionising the treatment of Type II diabetes and reduce obesity," he said.

The research might lead to the development of a drug that could mimic the protective effect of these mutations. Researchers believed the results could open new ways of preventing this devastating disease.

Alzheimer’s and diabetes may be the same disease, scientists claim. They have uncovered evidence that the debilitating form of dementia may be late stages of type 2 diabetes. The discovery would explain why nearly three quarters of patients with this form of diabetes go on to develop Alzheimer’s. Researchers from Albany University, New York State, believe the excess insulin they produce gets into the brain and disrupts key chemicals. Eventually masses of amyloid proteins—which poison brain cells—are created because of the excess which leads to Alzheimers, they say. …

Mice that could not make or metabolize the sugar gained less than normal mice. Mice lacking the ability to metabolize fructose don’t gain nearly as much weight as normal mice do, researchers report September 10 in Nature Communications. Fructose, which some people blame for the obesity epidemic and its related health crises (SN: 6/1/13, p. 22), shows up in high-fructose corn syrup and in table sugar, or sucrose. The body also makes home-grown fructose by modifying glucose in a process involving an enzyme called aldose reductase.

It seems that not even Beyonce or new, lower-calorie options can convince Americans to drink more soda. Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. all sold less soda in the second quarter in North America, dashing hopes for the moment that splashy new marketing and different sweetener mixes could get drinkers back. Coca-Cola Co. said it sold 4 percent less soda in North America, while PepsiCo Inc. simply said its decline for the region was in the "mid-single digits." Dr Pepper sold 3 percent less of the fizzy drinks...

Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine reported today that the cause of obesity and insulin resistance may be tied to the fructose your body makes in addition to the fructose you eat. In recent years the role of added sweeteners, such as high fructose corn syrup and table sugar (sucrose), has taken center stage as risk factors for obesity and insulin resistance. Numerous studies suggest that the risk from added sugars may be due to the fructose content. But in the study published in the Sept. 10 edition of Nature Communications, the team led by researchers at...

Blueberries, grapes, and apples offer the strongest health benefits.Science is finding more health benefits from blueberries—but raising more concerns about fruit juice. According to a new study by Harvard University researchers, eating whole fruits helps ward off diabetes, while drinking juice can actually raise the risk of developing the disease.In a study published in the British Medical Journal, nutrition experts report that consumption of certain fruits—especially blueberries—cut people’s risk of type 2 diabetes by as much as 26 percent in a survey of more than 180,000 subjects over two and a half decades.Study participants were asked about their consumption of...

The same protein tells beta cells in the pancreas to stop making insulin and then to self-destruct as diabetes worsens, according to a University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study published online today in the journal Nature Medicine. Specifically, the research revealed that a protein called TXNIP controls the ability of beta cells to make insulin, the hormone that regulates blood-sugar levels. "We spent years confirming that TXNIP drives beta-cell death in both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes," said Anath Shalev, M.D., director of the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center and senior author of the paper. "We were astounded to...

NIH scientists identify possible treatment target for type 2 diabetesResearchers at the National Institutes of Health have clarified in rodent and test tube experiments the role that inflammation plays in type 2 diabetes, and revealed a possible molecular target for treating the disease. The researchers say some natural messenger chemicals in the body are involved in an inflammatory chain that can kill cells in the pancreas, which produces insulin. A report of the finding appears online in Nature Medicine.“This study is a significant milestone in an ongoing exploration of the endocannabinoid system’s role in the metabolic complications of obesity,” says...

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Exercise promotes health, reducing most people’s risks of developing diabetes and growing obese. But just how, at a cellular level, exercise performs this beneficial magic — what physiological steps are involved and in what order — remains mysterious to a surprising degree. Several striking new studies, however, provide some clarity by showing that exercise seems able to drastically alter how genes operate. Genes are, of course, not static. They turn on or off, depending on what biochemical signals they receive from elsewhere in the body. When they are turned on, genes express various proteins that, in turn, prompt a range...

Diabetic rats control blood glucose better after weight-loss surgery. A procedure increasingly used to treat obesity by reducing the size of the stomach also reprogrammes the intestines, making them burn sugar faster, a study in diabetic and obese rats has shown. If the results, published today in Science1, hold true in humans, they could explain how gastric bypass surgery improves sugar control in people with diabetes. They could also lead to less invasive ways to produce the same effects. “This opens up the idea that we could take the most effective therapy we have for obesity and diabetes and come...

Diet sodas and other artificially sweetened products don't help with weight loss, according to a new study from Purdue University. According to Susan E. Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences and a behavioral neuro scientist, it is important to know the effects of having too much artificial sweetener in the diet. She added that consuming too much food containing "no-calorie sweeteners" have been known to be associated with increased risk of heart problems and weight gain.About 30 percent of all adults in the U.S. consume artificial sweeteners. Even though, diet sodas have been considered healthy food by many, studies show...

Tuesday June 25, 2013 (foodconsumer.org) -- A new report published in Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism suggests that eating foods or drinking beverages with fructose may increase risk of endothelial dysfunction, insulin resistance/diabetes mellitus type 2 and hypertension. Z. Khitan and D. H. Kim, the authors of the report, from Marshall University Joan Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, WV, USA say that uric acid resulting from uncontrolled fructose metabolism is the risk factor for metabolic syndrome and diabetes mellitus. What happens, according to the report, after fructose is ingested is that the sugar in the liver bypasses two highly...

A Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center study on dietary fructose has provided more evidence of the potential for controversy when researchers target products affecting consumer spending and corporate profits. This time, researchers are on the receiving end of sharp criticism from the Corn Refiners Association after reporting that fructose rapidly caused liver damage even without weight gain with primates.The researchers acknowledged when they released the study results that the role of dietary fructose in the development of obesity and fatty liver diseases “remains controversial.” Researchers determined that over a six-week study period, liver damage more than doubled in the monkeys...