Reuters reports that researchers have found that a type of fat found in hips and bottoms offers some protection against diabetes. The fat collects under the skin and helps improve the sensitivity to insulin, which regulates blood sugar. When tested in mice, researchers found that their metabolism improved leading to weight loss, improved blood sugar and insulin levels. The researchers are now trying to find out the substance within the fat is that is giving this benefit so that it can be used in medicines.

In reading comments on the news at various places, the general opinion has been that having a big bottom/hips is good and this finding proves it. Unfortunately, that is not what this study found. Excess fat is not only stored in a bottom/hips, it is stored elsewhere in the body as well. Thus, this excess fat can lead to many health problems including heart disease and diabetes. One should remember that for a given height, maintaining a weight within a normal range with adequate amount of fat is far better than having a big bottom/hips or being supermodel thin.

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Reuters reports that people who have diabetes have the same chance of having a major heart-related event as those who have already had a heart attack. The researchers who conducted the study found that a person with diabetes is 2.3 times more likely to get a stroke, heart attack or other major heart related event than a man who has neither diabetes nor a prior heart attack. Men who had a heart attack previously, were 2.5 times more likely to get the same heart-related events. For women, the risks were 2.5 times for diabetics and 2.7 times for those with a previous heart attack. Additionally, when diabetics have a heart attack, they are twice as likely to die as non-diabetics, the researchers said.

The study encompassed 3.3 million Danes who were at least 30 years old. Overall, 2.2 percent of subjects had diabetes and 2.4 percent had a prior heart attack.

For me, that means I, at 28, have the same risk for a heart attack or stroke as my father-in-law who is 31 years older. My goal of living until 100 just got it’s first heart attack!

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Rebecca at Off-White writes a post about what sugar does to your body once you eat it that is worth reading. In short:

1. When you put sugar in your mouth, the brain signals the stomach to prepare for digestion by producing insulin.
2. Once in the stomach, sugar breaks down very quickly and enters the blood stream which can only handle a certain amount at a time.
3. The excess sugar gives you a short-lived “high” by stressing your liver and pancreas and is then converted to fat for storage.
4. The cycle happens every time you eat sugar and this repeated stressing of the liver and pancreas leads to serious health problems like diabetes later on.

The amazing thing is that one can get all the sugar the body needs via whole, natural, unprocessed foods.

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Though the 20th annual Alert Day took place 11 days ago on March 25, it is still important for people to be made aware about the seriousness of the disease whenever possible. 21 million adults and children in the US (about 7% of the population) have the disease but only about 14.5 million of them know that they have it. The American Diabetes Association has a short and quick test which tells you if you are at risk for having or developing type 2 diabetes. It told me I was at low to medium risk.

My recommendation: get an annual check-up which includes a blood test for glucose levels and talk to your doctor about your lifestyle and family background to get a better risk assessment.

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I found this article on ScienceDaily to be very interesting and thought-provoking considering that I, an Indian, acquired this disease at a young age and at a relative low body mass index.

“We know that Asian Indians are highly susceptible to this condition [diabetes], and they often acquire the disease at an earlier age and at lower body mass index than people of European origin.” Mayo endocrinologist K. Sreekumaran Nair, M.D., Ph.D.

Currently, 32 million Indians have diabetes and in 30 years that number is expected to double to 64 million. So, Mayo Clinic researchers wanted to find out if Asian Indians, compared to Americans of Northern European origin, have noticeable differences in the way their cells convert nutrient fuel to available energy and whether these differences may increase the risk for diabetes. Although the study included on 39 subjects (13 diabetic Indians, 13 non-diabetic Indians, and 13 non-diabetic northeast Americans of European descent), it produced numerous interesting findings:

Diabetic and non-diabetic Indian subjects had a greater degree of insulin resistance (condition normally associated with obesity) than the American subjects, even though the study subjects were not obese. This should have also indicated their cells were poor at converting nutrient fuel to energy, but the opposite — Indian subjects had cells that produced energy more efficiently than their American counterparts — was found in this study.

Dr. Nair hypothesizes that the reason for this may be related to people moving to a more urban lifestyle — lower physical activities & more low-calorie foods. He says “the higher capacity to produce ATP that the Indian subjects displayed may have been an adaptive advantage for the generations that preceded them, when energy content of their diet was lower. But today, this trait may be a disadvantage given the higher energy content of their current diets.”

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My doctor called me at work and asked me to set an appointment as soon as possible to discuss the results of my blood work. As I was going out of country for 10 days in 48 hours, he asked me to come in that evening or next day morning. I knew right away what the diagnosis was going to be but not how bad it was going to be.

Three days prior, I had gone to the doctor for my annual check up and told him that I had lost a lot of weight in the previous year (38 pounds — 174 in February 2007 to 136 in November 2007) but did not know why. I had stopped exercising in March 2007 due to a problem in my heels. By June, to help stabilize my weight around 150, I began to eat a fair bit of junk food (chocolate cakes, chocolates — 3-4 Ferrero Rochers daily) on top of my daily food intake. The weight loss continued, however, 1-2 pounds a week. Mentally, I felt this was fantastic! My back pain had gone away, I was fitting into more clothes (even those I had not worn in years) and I was nearing what I ideally wanted to weigh — 135 pounds. The doctor briefly mentioned that this might be a symptom of diabetes but the blood work would tell us more accurately.

I went to see the doctor the next morning — January 25 — and he showed me the blood report, more specifically the fasting glucose level:

photo credit: ◄Kentigern►

317!!! I was shocked beyond belief! The doctor explained what the results meant, what was going to happen next and what I needed to do. Mentally though, I kept seeing visuals of a perfect countryside landscape being bombed and destroyed like there was no tomorrow…

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