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Researchers May Have Found Cause of Type 2 Diabetes
ozmanjusri writes "Scientists at Sydney's Garvan Institute have identified an enzyme called PKCepsilon as the active agent that blocks the production of insulin in diabetics. Insulin injections and implants try to control levels but do not address the reasons why insulin production is failing. This discovery may allow pharmaceutical companies to develop a drug to block the enzyme, allowing cells in the pancreas to function normally, though the team's leader, Trevor Biden, says 'What we've identified is a target that we can now latch onto to get therapy, but the journey from target to tablet of course is a long one ... It's probably going to take another 10 years at least to get something that's effective in humans.'"
The Garvan Institute is a non-profit organisation. They do patent discoveries, but any income earned is used to fund other research projects.
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Isn't type 2 diabetes basically dietary related (adult onset) and controled by monitoring blood sugar while type 1 is the permanent loss of pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin, which I guess is what your mom has? If so then this research wouldn't help people like your mom since they have no insulin in the first place.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
This is because after years of consistent overeating, your body begins to believe that elevated levels of blood sugar is "normal" and there is no need to produce more insulin.
This isn't true.
There are 2 components to type 2 diabetes
1) Insulin Resistance - Body isn't able to use the insulin produced efficiently.
2) Insulin Production - Body isn't able to produce enough insulin.
Here is the typical progression of type 2 diabetes.
For a normal person, when he eats carbohydrates, his blood sugar goes up. In response,
the pancreas produces insulin. The insulin pushes the blood sugar into the cells & the blood
sugar goes down.
When a person has insulin resistance, his pancreas produces insulin, but this insulin isn't
used efficiently. The insulin isn't able to push all the sugar into the cells. Hence the blood
sugar level doesn't go down immediatelly. Hence all the body parts are soaked in sugar which
is harmful to the organs. The pancreas is also an organ. The pancreas is soaked in sugar. This
causes insulin producing cells in the pancreas to die. This is a cyclic process i.e. because some
insulin producing cells die, the pancreases produces less insulin - this in turn causes blood
sugar to rise even more, which in turn causes more damage to the pancreas. This process keeps
continuing & finally when the pancreas has lost more than 50% of it's insulin producing cells,
blood sugar starts going out of control & he gets diabetes.
Typically, people who get type 2 diabetes are people who have the gene for
Insulin Resistance.
There are many people how much ever they eat, they don't get diabetes, or they
get it at a very advance age. Excess weight increases Insulin Resistance, but is
not the the cause of it.
A person with IR can delay or avoid diabetes for a long time by eating less, but
eating alone isn't the cause of type 2 diabetes.
This is the current received wisdom. The article mentions research leading another way. Basically it says you need fat + a certain enzyme to develop Diabetes Type 2. This may or not be true, but it's certainly worth investigating.
From the FA In their study, the researchers used genetically modified mice to observe the link between an oversupply of fat and type 2 diabetes.They found mice without the enzyme did not develop diabetes, despite gaining weight on a high-fat diet.
That would at least explain why some people can be as fat as they like without ever developing Diabetes 2 and why Diabetes 2 seems to run in families.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
Almost all cases of T2D are curable by a lifestyle change.
Wrong.
It's controllable by a lifestyle change.
Not curable.
I'm a 50 year old type 2 diabetic. I weigh 210 lbs, have a 34 inch waist, and stand 6'1", can bench press more than my body weight, and run an average of 12-14 Miles/week. Even in this condition, I have to use an oral medication (Glucophage) to fully control my blood sugar.
When I was first diagnosed, I had let myself get out of shape, and weighed about 225. I had to use insulin for about six months until I built enough muscle and lost enough fat to go to just oral meds, and for the first year after that, I had to take several.
I was in the army for 13 years when I was younger, and among other posts held the position of physical fitness instructor. I routinely scored on the extended scale in the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) every 6 Months for 8 to 10 years. (Basically, a Soldier had to score above 150 to finish basic training, extended scale starts with scoring over 100 in all three events - if you fall short in one, the high scores in the other two don't count). Getting back in shape with Diabetes was harder for me than getting to the top 2% of the Army. (And I had rank by then, so it wasn't drill sergeants pushing me, either).
I was never an Airborne Ranger, but I know a type 2 Diabetic who was, and he says getting back in shape felt about like Hell Week in ranger training (but lasted several months in his case).
There are several studies that show type 2 diabetes actually resets the satiation levels of the brain so that people with it get hungrier and have longer before they register fullness when their blood sugar levels are off (The disease thus impairs your judgment of one of means to fight it). There are others that show how a normal person will have extreme soreness the first few exercise sessions but if they push through it will stop feeling nearly that sore and how the average Type 2 Diabetic can expect that to continue for months or even more.
(It was about 6 months in my case - six months of near constant fatigue and extreme muscle soreness - six months when I did 8 reps with a weight, then 2 days later did the same 8 reps, then 2 days later did the same 8 reps, only to gain a rep every 2-3 weeks, before the process started getting up to normal sorts of gains - six months of worrying I would injure a foot with all the running and they would do what frequently happens to diabetics - amputation!).
Comments like yours are every bit as untrue and abusive as telling a rape victim they deserved it because they were dressed wrong. You should be heartily ashamed. It's not the researchers who 'just don't get it' here, it's people like you.
Who is John Cabal?