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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