Caffeine vs Type II Diabetes

OctaneZ writes "New research out of the Harvard School of Public Health indicates that coffee may lower your risk of Type II Diabetes. Men who drank 6 cups of coffee a day lowered their risk by 50%, while womens risk dropped 30%. The release also includes audio discussions about the suprising findings."

Comments

Re:Diet Soda? -OT-

[RevMike]

Whatever ever happened to a balanced diet? Atkins seems to me to be swinging the pendulum more and more away from equilibrium.

There actually is a pretty good rationale for low carb dieting. I'll try to sum up two major lines of evidence:

First, carbs didn't make up a large part of the human diet until the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Sugars and starchs are simply not available in large consistenet quantities to hunter/gatherers dominant for the previous 90,000 years. Studies comparing the remains of pre-agricultural people and agricultural people show that diabetes and heart disease only appear in populations once agriculture is introduced. The correlation was shown not to be an effect of lifespan. today, cultures such as the Inuit exist on nearly carb free diets and show a similar absence of diabetes and heart disease.

Second, carbs are nearly instantaneously converted to glucose by the digestive system. Where the digestive system easily discards unneeded fat and protein, glucose enters the blood stream very quickly. Excessively high glucose levels are toxic to the brain, so glucose triggers an insulin response. Insulin triggers the fat cells to remove glucose and store it, and it triggers the liver to remove glucose and store it as cholesterol. By removing the carb component of the diet, the body needs to produce its own glucose. The glycogen response triggers the fat cells to release stored glucose into the blood stream and it triggers the liver to convert cholesterol to glucose. Low carb dieting causes the body to spend most time in a glycogenic state, which means the body is burning fat and cholesterol as fuel. Hence, less fat and cholesterol.

Re:Sugar consumption

[phiala]

What is known is it is impossible to acquire Type II diabetes if you have less than 5% body fat. A person of normal weight has zero chance of acquiring the disorder.

Less than 5%?? If you are female, you would have so many other health problems to worry about at that point that not getting diabetes wouldn't do you much good!

Even for males, that's so low as to be almost unachievable...

To be healthy, a woman _needs_ at least 10% body fat, and men at least 5%, and to get that low you need to be working really, really hard. Ideal percentages body fat for _athletes_ run more like 12-18% female / 6-15% male.

Even if you ignore the 5% figure, a person of normal weight has a low but not non-zero chance of developing type ii diabetes.