Chemical That Affects Biological Clock Offers New Diabetes Treatment

First time accepted submitter rosy rohangi writes "Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered a chemical that provides a completely new direction and promise for the development of drugs to treat metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes – a key concern of public health in the U.S. due to the current obesity epidemic. From the article: '...Scientists have long suspected that diabetes and obesity could be related to problems of the biological clock. Laboratory mice with altered biological clocks, for example, often become obese and develop diabetes. Two years ago, a team led by Steve Kay, dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego, discovered the first biochemical link between the biological clock and diabetes. He found that a key protein, cryptochrome, which regulates the biological clocks of plants, insects and mammals also regulates glucose production in the liver and that changes in levels of this protein could improve the health of diabetic mice.'"

Comments

Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the mans. How does I get some treatmen?

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't eat too much or you'll get diabetes. And there's no treatment!

Re:Treatmen woo!

[masternerdguy]

Actually well managed diabetics can live completely healthy, long, and productive lives. My dad's one of them.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Don't eat too much HIGHLY CONCENTRATED SHORT CARBOHYDRATES.
You can eat as much vegetables as you want. You can stuff yourself until you burst every day. You won't get fat and you won't get sick.

A balanced, species-appropriate diet with no defective (half-heated) proteins... is that so hard?

Also, YES there is a treatment. You just don't know it yet. (You are aware that you're not “God”, right? [With doctors, you always have to ask.])

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually well managed diabetics can live completely healthy, long, and productive lives. My dad's one of them.

Actually, assuming this is true, which is absurd, if people who become diabetic secondary to body-composition management problems, (overeating) could manage themselves well, they WOULDN'T be diabetics, genius.

Glad your dad is "well managed". However, if you've ever seen a clinic waiting room (or casino gambling floor or a buffet,) full of a bunch of non-managed, super-morbidly obese human slugs missing various fingers, toes, feet, etc., being blinded by their blood turning into maple syrup, you'd know your dad is in the minority.

People who have this problem are victims of their biology. When food is scarce, (as it has been nearly the world over, for the vast majority of human history,) there is no survival advantage to be had in being able to resist the impulse to satisfy desires for a full stomach, and savory or sweet flavors on the tongue. In fact, quite the contrary, since food, ANY food, in some times and places, was a seasonal thing. You couldn't necessarily get all the nutrition and calories you needed during the winter, so the ability to build up a fat-reserve was a GOOD thing.

Now of course, because of the plentiful supply, (generally in industrialized nations,) of ridiculously high calorie foods, those people whose genetics code for a body that doesn't naturally build up a fat-reserve when food is plentiful, which was a lethal DISADVANTAGE for most of human history, turns into a survival advantage because it tends to reduce the odds of developing obesity comorbidities, such as insulin resistance/diabetes mellitus. So I welcome this development of a new treatment, as anyone should, just as I'm glad for such things as the discovery of aspirin, penicillin, and the invention of corrective lenses.

Evolution has, however, relatively little say in this, since these conditions tend not to kill before the victim is generally capable of reproducing successfully, and managing to raise the offspring to sufficient maturity that the offspring can manage without the parent(s).

If human beings entered their reproductive years, male and female both, AFTER diseases such as diabetes mellitus would cull those who can't resist temptation to overeat, you would see VERY few fat people. If women, even down to the point when they become fertile, refused to have sex with men until they reached their 40's and 50's, to verify their general health and virility into middle age, we would regain much of what we lost, in terms of an evolutionary curb on excessive eating, from the fact that these diseases kill only after, usually, it's too late to matter from a species-survival perspective.

Well, guess we'll see how it turns out.

Isn't irony delicious?

Re:Treatmen woo!

[mug funky]

or we could just eat less.

give it 10 years or so... perhaps scarcity will become the norm again.

and with childhood obesity an increasing problem, perhaps evolution really does have something to say about it.

honestly, there need to be some serious efforts made to show people how much they actually need to eat. there's such a thing with alcohol, (not that many abide by it) with the "standard drink". perhaps instead of stupid coloured boxes with percentages on them, a meal could be given a simple "1.5 standard meals" and be done with it.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Wouldn't you rather he just be able to take a pill?

Many, many more people would live longer, more pleasant lives.

Speaking of which, is there any way to take this drug now?

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Phrogman]

I have never eaten too much. I got T2 Diabetes all the same - because it can be genetic it seems.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you're not having any symptoms, that doesn't mean you're healthy. If it is taking medicine which is making you symptom-free, but the cause of the symptoms is lifestyle choices, then you're just turning a blind eye to the underlying problem.

Still, I'd rather the pharma industry shifted focus to curing, rather than to treating. Of course that's too inconvenient for many people, as they'd actually have to start living healthy lives instead of just having a pill to prevent a condition from re-occurring.

But I can dream, right?

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Yes you will get fat, and if you eat enough of anything, you will get sick. Its a simple equation, energy in, energy out. What isn't used up or turned into waste gets stored as fat. That's why its usually recommended for people who sit all day looking at screens to just eat less.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Jesrad]

"Its a simple equation, energy in, energy out."

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong. H. L. Mencken

It's a lot more complex than just "calories in, calories out", as evidenced in this kind of experiment: take healty mice, restrict their food by a mere 5%, and *surprise* they grow a lot more fat tissue at the expense of lean mass.

If it really is just a problem of "balancing caloric incomes and expenses", then please explain why do people who restrict their calorie intake do not lose the amount of weight that corresponds to the missing calories, and why people who expand their calorie intake on purpose do not quite gain the weight that they should (some of them not gaining any weight at all) ?

Metabolism adjusts towards the amount of energy available from your food, and not the other way around. That amount derives from the calories you eat, MINUS those that are diverted to long term storage in your adipocytes. If metabolism fails to adjust enough, or on the contrary if it overshoots, then you are looking at a metabolic problem: one of regulation of energy storage versus energy bioavailability, and not one of "bad behavior".

Re:Treatmen woo!

[realityimpaired]

Wouldn't you rather he just be able to take a pill?

I think his point was that with a little willpower, diabetes can be managed with diet alone. No need for injections. Now, replacing the injections with a pill would be a huge advantage for most people, but they'd still need to monitor their blood glucose levels so they can treat urgencies with an injection.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[realityimpaired]

honestly, there need to be some serious efforts made to show people how much they actually need to eat. there's such a thing with alcohol, (not that many abide by it) with the "standard drink". perhaps instead of stupid coloured boxes with percentages on them, a meal could be given a simple "1.5 standard meals" and be done with it.

The problem is, where do you define the standard? The last major attempt to define "standard" nutrition rules in the US is the reason that so many people are obese in the first place. You had people crusading against saturated fats, and replacing them with trans fats which we now realize are significantly worse for you than the saturated fats they replaced, and you *still* have people crusading for high carb diets, even though those carbohydrates metabolize into glucose as a natural part of digestion (some of them, faster than table sugar does), and trigger insulin production which, among other things, is a hormonal cue for your body to start storing energy in fat cells. 40 years later, they're *still* teaching this crap in schools. You want to know why people are fat, it's because they've been fed bad information for their entire lives.

or we could just eat less.

Losing weight isn't difficult, but it's not as simple as eating less. In other words, it's not simply a question of calories in versus calories out: You have to eat the right food, too, or you could find that you're *still* gaining weight. There's a reason that Atkins actually worked for most people: he advocated getting rid of carbohydrates in your diet... big surprise, as soon as people went back to eating so much bread, the weight went back on. Now, you need a small amount of carbs in your natural diet, but humans did not evolve to eat a diet based on grains, we evolved eating high fat and savory foods like meat, nuts, and legumes. Mother nature isn't stupid... there's a reason you crave fatty foods. They're more filling, and they take longer to digest, and because of that they promote weight loss.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[advocate_one]

I think his point was that with a little willpower, diabetes can be managed with diet alone. No need for injections.

Sadly that is NOT true... the elevated blood glucose levels after meals cause damage to the beta cells in the pancreas killing them off. No matter how tightly controlled your diet is, you will be killing some cells off with every meal you have. The point with diet control is to delay the progression to diet plus pills and then onto insulin... If you can keep your long term HbA1c levels down below 7%, then the secondary complications of Diabetes (blindness, amputations of lower extremities, kidney failure) will be kept at bay.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[moeinvt]

"The last major attempt to define "standard" nutrition rules in the US is the reason that so many people are obese in the first place ... and you *still* have people crusading for high carb diets,"

+1 insightful. That message was drilled into people's heads for so many years, I can't even remember when it started.
"Eat a bunch of grains and fruits while minimizing fat and you'll be healthy." Total BS. I'll never again believe anything that the government or the medical industrial complex tries to tell me.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Losing weight isn't difficult, but it's not as simple as eating less.

I'll vouch for this. My wife started on a diet to get to the doctors recommend weight. The first thing we did was look at what she eats in a normal day to find out what has a high calorie count. After a few days of logging EVERYTHING, we realized that she was only consuming between 1100-1300 calories/day(she has been trying to lose weight for a long time). Since cutting calories consumed wasn't the issue, we decided to change what she ate. Being that until recently we didn't have much money, we decided to start spending more money on fruits/veggies, which we previously could not afford on a regular basis. Her calories consumed went UP, but her weight has been going down. She has been steadily losing 1-2Lbs every week for the past few months, first time in almost 10 years. With my anecdotal experience, I would say being poor can make you fat.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[contrapunctus]

While you are not wrong.

Perpetual machines don't exist and we can't get free energy out of nothing. Eventually, restricting diet will lower weight.
And people really really don't realize how much they eat (they are not dishonest, they just don't realize).

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

People who have this problem are victims of their biology.

In fairness, the majority of people who find themselves in this situation are actually a victim of their mouth; as in what they've been putting into it for the previous many years. In far too many cases, people have diabetes because they are horribly obsese and they are horribly obese because they've crammed cookies down their own throat without any regard for their long term prognosis.

In far too many cases, treating diabetes is actually an attempt to fix a symptom and in no way attempts to address the actual cause.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a simple equation, energy in, energy out.

"I'm not getting fat, I'm carbing up for the marathon I'll run next winter."

Human body don't work like that, buddy.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Taibhsear]

My sister who almost died from pancreatitis by doing just that would disagree with you. Did it to try to be healthier and lose weight at that. Triglycerides shot through the roof, pancreas swelled to the size of a large intestine with fluid that needed to have a drainage port surgically implanted. You clearly aren't a doctor or certified nutritionist.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fat from fruits and vegetables, perhaps. Obese? I doubt it. For the kind of calories needed to get obese, you need a lot of sugar and/or fat.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[macs4all]

Parent's comment is WAY too eugenic at the end, and he "human slugs" epithet is entirely uncalled-for (especially when followed up with the correct statement that this is primarily an evolutionary process that is now out-of-step with our current (temporary) food supply situation).

However, the parent's assessment of the cause of most type II diabetes, and how it so neatly correlates with body-type, is spot-on.

I disagree, however, that evolution doesn't play much of a part in this, or else we wouldn't have so many "human slugs". Quite the opposite.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] perhaps instead of stupid coloured boxes with percentages on them, a meal could be given a simple "1.5 standard meals" and be done with it.

That would be like imagining that the warnings on the sides of packages of cigarettes will really work. It's a joke.

Even if that might work for packaged food, how are you going to do that for people who cook for themselves out of raw ingredients at home? Going to label each carrot, potato, piece of beef, etc.?

With many people the desire to eat more overrides the knowledge that they don't need to. If you can't understand this because you're one of those blessed, genetically in this magical time and place in history, you may find it difficult to understand. If you can honestly say desire has NEVER EVER made you do anything you knew you shouldn't have, you're a very rare person indeed.

Most people have at some point or another, during the course of their lives, run a yellow-light as it turned red, driven too fast, too tired, or too drunk, kissed a close relation, (and I'm not talking about a peck on the cheek...) took something that they didn't own and had no right to take, hit someone else (or worse), smoked a cigar[ette/illo], imbibed an alcoholic beverage, or took any other form of recreational drug, or for that matter had sex for any reason other than procreation with anyone. Any who haven't yet certainly will before they die. All these things are strictly speaking unnecessary, taboo, or downright illegal. Yet all fit in the same category of activity as over-eating. Chronic overeating, however, unlike most of these other activities is manifestly obvious on sight. Looking at a group of such miscreant human beings walk or amble down the street as have done one or more of the foregoing, you can't tell which one got high yesterday, or slept with her brother last night, or is carrying 25,000 in stolen diamonds in his briefcase, or habitually beats his wife, or is a 14 year-old alcoholic... but you can spot that fat guy a mile away. Literally if he's fat enough.

But odds are anyone reading this has yielded to one or more of these temptations, even if that person has never had a weight-management problem. Even if you are that person, and are much less likely to end up diabetic than someone with similar genetics who HAS had that problem, you can perhaps understand what it's like to give-in to a temptation to do something you knew, or should reasonably have known you shouldn't have done. For people who overeat, a similar experience to that pleasure you might get from a smoke or a toke or a drink or a screw, from zipping by cars that are going 70 on the freeway as if they're standing still while you're on a Japanese crotch-rocket going twice their speed, or from the forbidden thrill of kissing and fondling that hot little piece of ass... who is maybe someone you ought not be kissing or touching...

Some people may overeat because of what the feeling of being full does to their epinephrine/norepinephrine/dopamine receptors, or for the pleasure of tasting something delicious, or because it relieves boredom, or socially as some people who drink or smoke to be with the "in" crowd, or because their parents beat them when they were children for not "cleaning" their plates, given the existence of a place called "Africa" and the population of said place being almost entirely, we were told, starving children... and that left them with a tremendous and deep-seated aversion to leaving so much as a tiny crumb of a morsel of food on a plate.

Maybe some are trying to kill themselves, but don't have the guts to use a gun, or other fast and sure means to end their lives, so are doing the metabolic equivalent of "living on the edge," buying the aforementioned high-performance Japanese racing bike, and seeing if that "220" mph marker inscribed at the top of the gauge is there for looks or if the bike can actually go that fast...

I think if we all had X-Ray vision and could see smoker's emphysemic/cancerous corrode

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Ironhandx]

common myth about Type 2 diabetes is that it is caused by over-eating.

This is in no way the case.

Certain people are genetically pre-disposed to type 2 diabetes. Over-eating on carbs is simply a very good trigger for the diabetes, this is what causes the correlation.

However while quantity can definitely cause the onset faster, just eating a slice of bread a day for someone that has the pre-disposition will eventually trigger it. Any kind of what most people would consider "normal" quantity of refined sugars and carbs will definitely trigger it eventually.

As with all things genetic you can be more susceptible than others of course, but the only real way to avoid getting it if you know you are pre-disposed to being a type 2 diabetic is multivitamins and a meat-heavy diet combined with a smaller selection of nutritious fruits and veggies.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[macs4all]

The problem is, where do you define the standard? The last major attempt to define "standard" nutrition rules in the US is the reason that so many people are obese in the first place. You had people crusading against saturated fats, and replacing them with trans fats which we now realize are significantly worse for you than the saturated fats they replaced, and you *still* have people crusading for high carb diets, even though those carbohydrates metabolize into glucose as a natural part of digestion (some of them, faster than table sugar does), and trigger insulin production which, among other things, is a hormonal cue for your body to start storing energy in fat cells. 40 years later, they're *still* teaching this crap in schools. You want to know why people are fat, it's because they've been fed bad information for their entire lives.

You are exactly correct! In fact, shortly after I was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic, I went into my Dr.'s office with a "food pyramid" that I had (re) designed. It was essentially the INVERSE (but not quite) of the USDA food pyramid we've been seeing all our lives in the U.S.

My Dr. took one look at it and said "You should patent this."

I have another comment regarding caloric restriction and weight loss: IT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK!

Unless you truly get to concentration-camp levels of food-deprivation, that same genetic predisposition to weight gain also allows most people alive today to SERIOUSLY "turn down the metabolic fires" if their bodies even get a HINT that food is becoming more scarce. And the more often someone "yo-yo diets" (diets then stops, then starts again), the more pronounced the effect. In fact, there was a study where they yo-yo dieted some rats (or mice) a few times, then they tried to make them lose weight through caloric restriction. They found that they literally had to STARVE the rats to get them to lose weight!

No one has that much "willpower". And no one who is naturally thin has any right to say differently. Period.

The late Dr. Atkins was right on. Using a slightly self-modified version of his suggested diet plan, I was personally able to drop 85 pounds in nine months, and that was without one bit of exercise, and without "going hungry" even a little bit.

Your body derives energy by converting foodstuffs to glucose, through processes of varying complexity (and energy-conversion COST). Mother nature isn't stupid; so your body (mostly) converts the easiest-to-reduce-to-glucose substances first. This means your body will convert, in decreasing order of preference:

1. Simple Sugars (glucose, fructose primarily). That's why Gatorade has GLUCOSE in it.

2. Complex Sugars (sucrose, dextrose, maltose(?) )

3. Carbohydrates (I won't get into the simple and complex carbohydrates levels here, or the Glycemic Index (which all this is based on))

4. Body Fat stores. There is a hormone called Glucagon that is responsible for this. It is kind of the "anti-insulin".

5. Ingested Fats. These take (far) more energy to convert to glucose than internal fat stores, which is why EATING FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT!

6. Ingested Proteins. These generally raise the blood glucose only slightly, and primarily contribute other things to the body (L-Arginine, L-Orinthine, etc.). BUT, in food-scarce (or dieting) times, they also keep your body from consuming its food-of-last-resort: YOU.

7. Proteins from the body itself. That's the "You", above. When your body has to resort to this "food", death usually soon follows...

So, with the list above, it is easy to see that simply restricting carbohydrates FORCES the body to do its normal "food selection" routine, and so it picks the next-easiest "food", which is BODY FAT. "Burning" body fat produces a "combustion by-product", a Ketone, which then is eliminated through the urine. That is why some Atkins followers use "Ketostix(r)" to monitor this activity, and why the sugar-lobby keeps ha

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Losing weight isn't difficult, but it's not as simple as eating less. In other words, it's not simply a question of calories in versus calories out: You have to eat the right food, too, or you could find that you're *still* gaining weight.

It is as simple, actually, you're mistaken.

As I mentioned before, if you consume fewer calories than you need, over any given period of time, (barring the possibility of someone walking up to you and injecting you with lead, or fat, or something else) and you GAIN weight over that same said period of time, (not counting water, naturally, hydration fluctuates,) you have figured out how to VIOLATE ONE OR MORE OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. Considering you inhale diatomic oxygen molecules, react them with stored simple and complex hydrocarbons, and subsequently exhale carbon dioxide, the carbon coming from the chemical energy you previously consumed, you become slightly less massive with each breath.

Unless you think you're inhaling more CO2 than you're exhaling... which is a trick you can do if you're, say... a tree... but you're skin would probably be green or purple, generally the colors of plant leaves.

I'll agree fat in food is a double-edged sword, from a weight-loss perspective, but not for the reasons you suggested. It is easy to consume a huge number of calories from fatty foods, considering fat contains roughly 3500 kilocalories (large or food calories) per pound... more than anything else found in a typical diet, even pure alcohol. Eating foods lower in fat (and carbohydrates which are still fairly calorie-dense, though not to the extent fat is) help you fill up faster, the same way a box full of Styrofoam weighs less than a similarly sized box full of lead shot. If you stuff your stomach with food that has 25 calories per ounce, for example, you'll get less potential calories from it than if you're eating the same volume of food, having the same texture, water content, etc., but which has 50 calories per ounce. On the flip-side, fatty foods are tasty/yummy, and some fats contain chemical compounds the body needs, so IN MODERATION, they're not bad.

The old saying is generally true, all things are good in moderation. (Or however exactly they say it...) Obviously polonium, for example is not one of those things, but I think the point holds as valid nonetheless, for most things that aren't deadly when eaten, drank, or inhaled.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[macs4all]

With my anecdotal experience, I would say being poor can make you fat.

RIGHTY-O!!! Give that man a Grapefruit!!!

There ain't NUTHIN' cheaper than CARBOHYDRATES!!!

In fact, my personal Atkins experiment ended because I simply couldn't AFFORD to carbohydrate-restrict anymore, due to unemployment.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[macs4all]

In fairness, the majority of people who find themselves in this situation are actually a victim of their mouth; as in what they've been putting into it for the previous many years. In far too many cases, people have diabetes because they are horribly obsese and they are horribly obese because they've crammed cookies down their own throat without any regard for their long term prognosis.

In fairness, I never grew up in a household that had "the cookie jar", or a mom that baked cakes, pies, etc. often. We also did NOT have sweetened drinks (pretty much just water or unsweetened tea). And yet, as soon as I hit puberty (thanks, God! (rollseyes)), I INSTANTLY went from "so-skinny-they-thought-I-had-leukemia" (really!), to a BLIMP. It happened over a period of less than a year.

So don't give me your pious bullshit about "cramming cookies", fucktard.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[macs4all]

That's why its usually recommended for people who sit all day looking at screens to just eat less.

And that's why it never works. Because it ISN'T just a "simple equation"; because there are compensatory feedback mechanisms in place.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[macs4all]

While you are not wrong.

Perpetual machines don't exist and we can't get free energy out of nothing. Eventually, restricting diet will lower weight. And people really really don't realize how much they eat (they are not dishonest, they just don't realize).

Your "solution" only works under the conditions of "The Final Solution".

NO living being has the "willpower" to ignore continual, gut-gnawing hunger, with the weakness and illness that accompanies it.

While I certainly agree that today's nutritionally-dense foods are very easy to lose track of, it just isn't possible to ask people to VOLUNTARILY "starve themselves". It almost NEVER works.

And it is not because people lack the "willpower". It's because we're genetically-predisposed to make FOOD a priority, even over sex...

Re:Treatmen woo!

[mug funky]

i find this and GP's post very interesting.

i've certainly observed this phenomenon in some towns i've been to (typically rural areas, but ghost-town sort of feeling - an old port that was made redundant by the expansion of a more major port near a bigger town, that kinda thing). i don't fully understand it because i'm sort of inner city and have access to more than just the local supermarket.

my wife and i are getting a business off the ground and everything i earn is going into it. plus we have a 13 month old kid, so things are extremely tight. diet wise, we're finding that meat is the most expensive item, and honestly if you do it right you can cut it almost entirely, or stretch that 1 chicken very far indeed (ie use absolutely all of it - everything not eaten gets made into a stock, and the softened bony crap left over goes to the dogs). iron can be had from roo meat, which is a fair bit cheaper here (an amazing cut will cost you less that a crap cut of beef and taste a lot better). pasta sorts out the carbs, and homemade bread. there's always rice if needed, potatoes are cheap as at the moment (cheaper than sugar too, which is rare). greens grow in the garden, but it's a tiny garden so i wouldn't rely on it for more than the vitamin content, and veggies are actually pretty cheap if you go to the market (even the supermarket isn't ridiculous). canned tomato, chickpea and butter-beans make up the rest of it. all this for about AU30 bucks a week. we're brewing our own beer and distilling our own vodka/gin/bourbon/whatever.

neither of us go hungry, and neither of us are overweight (though my little son puts away as much as i do...)

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Losing weight isn't difficult, but it's not as simple as eating less. In other words, it's not simply a question of calories in versus calories out: You have to eat the right food, too, or you could find that you're *still* gaining weight.

It is as simple, actually, you're mistaken.

As I mentioned before, if you consume fewer calories than you need, over any given period of time, (barring the possibility of someone walking up to you and injecting you with lead, or fat, or something else) and you GAIN weight over that same said period of time, (not counting water, naturally, hydration fluctuates,) you have figured out how to VIOLATE ONE OR MORE OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICS.

You've completely missed his point and probably have never needed to lose more than a few pounds. He didn't say that, ultimately, you don't need to use more calories than you consume. He stated that the formula Calories in / Calories out is worthless as a metric for losing weight. Calories out in a human is so variable that you can be chasing incredibly low numbers of Calories in, feel terrible while fighting off horrible hunger pangs and still GAIN weight. It's far more important to eat the right kinds of foods instead. That allows you to eat more calories, not feel overwhelmingly hungry and still LOSE weight.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's Type I diabetes and Type II diabetes; quite different animals.

Type I is the kind you get in your teens and is managed with insulin, as well as regulating your carbs intake. My hunch is that it's an auto-immune disease triggered by a virus infection, likely one of the herpes family, but that's just my guess.

type II is the later onset version, aka insulin-resistant, and is really just part of a large complex of symptoms sometimes (and with increasing seriousness) referred to as diabesity. As the names suggest, it's not treatable with insulin, which is tough, and it's tied in with obesity, lack of exercise, dietary fat intake, high caloric intake in general, and of course genetics, each of these being a separate risk factor in a complex way, given that they are all obviously related to each other, as well as arterial disease, heart failure, high cholesterol, dyslipidemia in general and other stuff on the symptom side. if you're lucky, you can make it go away by losing weight, exercising, changing your diet, and other ways to address that list of causes. however, you can't do much about the genetic component.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[badkarmadayaccount]

Don't get incest mixed up with the rest - it doesn't have health consequences except sex being good for you. I'm inclined to argue about weed as well, and this is coming from someone treating an addiction to the same.

Re:Treatmen woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually well managed diabetics can live completely healthy, long, and productive lives. My dad's one of them.

Actually, assuming this is true, which is absurd, if people who become diabetic secondary to body-composition management problems, (overeating) could manage themselves well, they WOULDN'T be diabetics, genius.

What the hell are you snarking out for? The well-managed-diabetes dad could be Type 1, for all we know, in which case No, you can't manage your way out of diabetes, and no, it is far from absurd. Me being a well-managed Type 1 diabetic approaching a gold medal for surviving with the disease for 50 years.

It's like that radio commerial...

[nonsequitor]

Part of you is worried about your weight, but All of you wants a Baby! Call XYZ fertility clinic today.

Re:It's like that radio commerial...

[level_headed_midwest]

...where they put you on diabetes medication (metformin.)

Re:It's like that radio commerial...

[macs4all]

...where they put you on diabetes medication (metformin.)

As diabetes meds go, it's the best and safest by far. And in fact, it may even have anti-cancer benefits!

article has holes

[mynamestolen]

literally. RTFA has words missing. Hope a not was not not left not said or something

Re:article has holes

[Anonymous Coward]

even slashdot's title is misspelled. a sign of the times.

Re:article has holes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya trying to RTFA is waste of brain cells and time as you try to fill in the gaps.
You should read the proper article at Science Daily instead (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120712144749.htm)

It's atrocious when a blog copies a real article and then cuts out words to probably claim that it's an original piece, or something along those lines.

Re:article has holes

[Drishmung]

even slashdot's title is misspelled. a sign of the times.

The entity formerly known as slashdot?

Cryptochrome

[Anonymous Coward]

is like the coolest word ever.

Re:Cryptochrome

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the color of Neal Stephenson's bike.

Re:Cryptochrome

[Drishmung]

I rather like adrenochrome—the word that is.

Re:Cryptochrome

[rrohbeck]

Sounds like some really old Kodak stuff dug up by archaeologists.

Re:Cryptochrome

[mug funky]

like their short-lived experiment in photochemical stenography?

New Diabetes Treatmen

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck yeah, editing!

Re:Treatment woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

And well managed diabetics may yet still age more rapidly than non-diabetics. I am one of them.

don't get yer hopes up

[jds91md]

don't get your hopes up. A pint of Ben & Jerry's in front of your screen is the same number of calories and the same impact on obesity whether you eat it at 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if biological clock research paid off elsewhere in human health (insomnia, jet lag, sleep messed up by depression, etc.) -- Josh

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the number of calories does not change. How your body handles those calories do.

I do some casual bodybuilding. If I consume all my protein goodness early in the day then my body burns the food for energy. If I eat it at night then my body says 'Hey! I don't need energy right now and this protein could really be great at patching up all that worn muscle tissue.' If my caloric intake as a whole does not compensate for the loss of calories during the day then I lose fat and gain muscle.

The time of day you eat certain things changes four hours of muscle building, fat burning deliciousness into four hours of sweaty it-isn't-doing-anything exhaustion.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Ocker3]

Actually no, food eaten within three hours of going to sleep tends to get turned directly into fat and not properly broken down into the normal nutrients, so the timing of food consumption can make a difference.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well, mere obesity and heart disease will be an improvement over obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Sad but true.

And maybe if you stop feeling like shit all the time...

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Anonymous Coward]

this is an old urban myth.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Not completely true.

There was a study where prisoners were fed a half-calorie diet. Some were fed it in the morning, the others in the evening.

Both groups lost weight, but the ones fed it in the evening lost it more slowly.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[rrohbeck]

+1. GP's myth has been debunked many times.
Of course, if you eat or drink sugary junk it gets converted mostly into fat any time of the day.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[wisnoskij]

Just spent a little while looking this up. There are a lot of opinions both ways, but all the scientific studies I could fine (for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18842774) implied/proved/gave evidence that night-time eating did in fact produce significantly more weight gain then the same amount eaten during the daytime.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Anonymous Coward]

The example paper says no such thing! On the contrary, the night-time eaters ate about 500 calories more/day. And they gained more weight. No evidence of different partitioning.

Re:don't get yer hopes up

[Rich0]

Perhaps a treatment would:

1. Increase your calorie consumption by making you more active and less tired.
2. Make you feel less inclined to eat the pint of Ben and Jerry's in the first place.

Some people eat more than others, and some of the former gain more weight than others. Perhaps this is a result of genetics, and not moral inferiority. Honestly, I'm surprised we don't try to exorcise the obese the way many carry on these days...

My wife will just have to wait

[cvtan]

until there is a Treatwomen.

Re:My wife will just have to wait

[Dan East]

Don't you mean Treatwom?

Re:My wife will just have to wait

[LongearedBat]

It should be either treatwoment or treatpeoplet.

Re:My wife will just have to wait

[cvtan]

Yes, now that someone has ruined everything by fixing the typo!

Cycloset

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a little known drug on the market called Cycloset that works for Type 2 Diabetes, and part of it is working on the biological clock. Its been around a few years, but it was out of patent before it got approved so most doctors don't even know about it.

Re:Cycloset

[macs4all]

There is a little known drug on the market called Cycloset that works for Type 2 Diabetes, and part of it is working on the biological clock. Its been around a few years, but it was out of patent before it got approved so most doctors don't even know about it.

Oh, you mean Parlodel Bromocriptine! That drug has been around for years, and has long been the darling of life-extension advocates as a powerful antioxidant. It is yet another ergot alkaloid discovered by the late, great Dr. Albert Hoffman. In fact, Durk and Sandy Pearson first spoke of its MANY benefits in their way-ahead-of-its-time book "Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach", reportedly published in 1982 (although I swear it was a few years earlier). It's a very interesting book, and well worth trying to find. I'm glad to see that Bromocriptine is finally getting a little love. In fact, speaking of "love", Bromocriptine also inhibits Prolactin, which is widely thought to decrease sex drive. So it's a win-win-win drug!

Error in TFA

[techno-vampire]

Reading TFA (Yeah, yeah, I know. However, I'm Type II, and this might be important to me.) I see that it says, "Diabetes is caused by a buildup of glucose in the blood, which can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and blindness." Wrong! the buildup of glucose in the blood is a symptom of diabetes, not the cause. I gather that this is just a blog post, not the original report so this might just be the blogger not knowing as much about the subject as he thinks he does. Still, it does make you wonder how many other errors are in TFA for the same reason.

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible that DM is defined by high sugar without being caused by high sugar? Correlation is not causation and all that.

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

If sugar-in-urine is your bread and butter, may I suggest a different brand of bread and also butter? It should help immensely in having people accept dinner invitations.

Re:Error in TFA

[DeadManCoding]

Wow... As a med school student, you should know that DM II symptomatically is excessive or low glucose in the body. Hence the reason for testing using blood. DKA is primarily keytones (sp?) in the urine. The only reason I know this is d/t Type 1 myself. All hospital testing I've seen and been part of is blood, no urine.

Now, in all honesty, I'm not sure what the testing differences is for DM Type 2, so I could be very off. Most of my own patients use blood for testing as well. I think the only reason for urine testing is for very excessive glucose. We're talking 1000+ BG. Once DKA sets in, you can test urine for those keytones to determine BG. The good news is that I'll be the first to say that I could be wrong.

Re:Error in TFA

[sprior]

Gosh I hope not because you've got it totally wrong. The official diagnosis for DM is a high fasting blood glucose and/or a high glucose tolerance test, but again both of these are symptoms of the disease, not the cause.

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Type I diabetes is caused by the pancreas not creating enough or any insulin, which leads to the buildup of glucose in your bloodstream.

Type II diabetes is caused by the body becoming insulin resistant, which leads to a buildup of glucose in your bloodstream.

Diabetes is characterized by a buildup of glucose in your bloodstream, but that is not the cause.

I have an ultra-rare form of bone-marrow cancer that causes the body release large quantities of eosinophils.
Unfortunately, eosinophils can bind to insulin receptors in your cells. So, if you are diabetic, keep your allergies under control as it will boost your blood sugar levels.

Re:Error in TFA

[girlintraining]

"Diabetes is caused by a buildup of glucose in the blood, which can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and blindness." Wrong! the buildup of glucose in the blood is a symptom of diabetes, not the cause.

It's not an inaccurate statement. Clinically, abnormally high glucose levels after fasting is diagnostic for the disease. Although, like all things in biology, it's not the root cause; High glucose levels are due to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is not fully understood but it is is often found in patients who are obese. This is why diabetes is referred to as a syndrome. There are many potential causes, and it varies from patient to patient. Obesity is the most common medical condition found co-existing (comorbid) with diabetes.

So just because the author didn't describe the full pathology of the disease, that doesn't make him wrong. If you have high glucose levels, you (very likely) have diabetes. In layman's terms, that's the cause.

Re:Error in TFA

[techno-vampire]

The only reason I know this is d/t Type 1 myself. All hospital testing I've seen and been part of is blood, no urine.

I'm Type II, diagnosed just over ten years ago when my doctor was trying to find out what caused my first kidney stone. (never did) I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the original diagnoses was from a urinalysis, but I do know that I keep track of my blood sugar with twice-daily blood tests and the occasional A1c, also a blood test. I have several friends who have been (at least) suspected of developing Type II, and in all cases, they were given blood tests.

Re:Error in TFA

[ColdWetDog]

Wait. What?

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost everything is a symptom. Real causes are difficult to find for most things. Type II diabetes current cause (if we ignore the obvious bad diet and lack of exercise) is an autoimmune response taking out insulin receptors in tissues. It is believed it is caused by overload of sugar in the system. Treating it with drugs or with extra insulin is just treating symptoms once again. Real solution is to lower sugar intake and also dramatically increasing sugar utilization aka exercise. Depleting your glycogen reserves once in a few days is a Good Thing!

Hint: Fit people (as opposed to thin people) have about 300g (2500 kcal) of glycogen reserves. Couch potatoes have about a third of that, or maybe 600-800 kcal. So, if you are riding at a nice pace on your bike and your legs can't move after about 1-1.5 hours, you are a couch potato!

There are some fit people that are fat. There is a lot more couch potatoes that are thin.

PS. Re: summary of diabetes types,
    * Type 1 diameter is autoimmune response taking out insulin producing cells in the pancreas.
    * Type 2 is autoimmune response taking out insulin receptors (reversible in most cases).
    * And it is now believed that Alzheimer could be a Type 3 diabetes.

Re:Error in TFA

[chooks]

As other sib posters of mine have pointed out, this is in fact wrong. Historically (as in Ancient Greece), tasting urine for sweetness was how the disease got its name (it's not called 'mellitus' for nothing!). These days the diagnosis is through measuring levels of sugar in the blood, although most recently, measuring the surrogate marker of HbA1c can now be used to make a formal diagnosis. Before this you could either do a fasting blood sugar level, a glucose tolerance test, or having a rip roaring single glucose level with evidence of end organ damage (among other ways of diagnosis, which I am sure there some).

Testing of urine is done routinely (guideline is once per year) to look for microalbuminemia -- essentially damage to the renal apparatus caused by high blood sugar. If someone is in DKA, they would have high urine ketones, but this is not what is looked for in routine urine testing.

Once the diagnosis is made, it can be categorized (e.g. Type I, Type II, iotragenic, neoplastic, etc...).

Re:Error in TFA

[techno-vampire]

Type II diabetes current cause (if we ignore the obvious bad diet and lack of exercise) is an autoimmune response taking out insulin receptors in tissues.

I know that Type I is an autoimmune disorder, but AFAICT, Type II isn't. Do you have any sources for your claim, or are you just making it up as you go along?

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Making up and taking completely out of context, mostly.

Re:Error in TFA

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

A diagnosis can be by symptom, such as sugar in the blood or urine. This is not the same as what causes it.

I still have a tough time telling if type II is the result of not enough insulin production or of insulin resistance.

This study suggests another item, that the liver produces too much glucose. But would that still overwhelm your natural insulin? Wouldn't this just be part of the issue, even if true, with insulin resistance being the lion's share still?

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a type II diabetic, and I'm still somewhat unclear about much of this.

Type II diabetes is, by definition, caused by insulin resistance. However, I've heard Random People On The Internet talk about reduced insulin production (but not lack of production, which would be type I) being an issue in type II as well. I have no idea if this has any basis in reality, or if these people are talking out their ass.

Synthesis of glucose is a normal function of the liver. Naturally, if you already have persistently high blood glucose, you don't want the liver making the problem even worse by making more. (And apparently, diabetes can throw this mechanism out of whack even worse.) This is a fairly well-understood aspect of type II diabetes. One of the first things they do when you're diagnosed is to give you a drug called metformin. It reduces glucose synthesis in the liver. Apparently it also increases insulin sensitivity (helping to address the root issue of insulin resistance), but what I've read seems to suggest that this is a secondary effect, and reduction of glucose synthesis is the primary effect.

This is all stuff that I've gleaned by reading about the disease, much of it from sources that are contradictory, confusing, and unclear. I'd love to have a lot of this shit clarified.

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I appreciate how you've just sidestepped the whole massive confusion over what causes diabetes. I'm not a medical person or diabetic so I think you ought to go ahead and defend yourself from these attacks. If your respondents had only googled/wiki'ed they'd know that diabetes means "lots of piss due to a metabolic problem" and mellitus means "sweet" and that having "diabetes mellitus" technically means "having a lot of sweet piss." I guess the problem here is that with treatment, most people diagnosed with diabetes mellitus cease to meet the diagnostic criteria of "lots of sweet piss" in a technical sense since treatment fixes the whole "lots of sweet piss" part.

So, care to explain the cause of islet cell loss that causes type 1 diabetes? I'm quite keen on hearing the putative roles of viruses, HLA serotypes, genetics, and luck.

Re:Error in TFA

[Antarius]

However, I've heard Random People On The Internet talk about reduced insulin production (but not lack of production, which would be type I) being an issue in type II as well.

That sounds like Diabetes LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults), which people often nickname "Type 1.5"

Interestingly, family history is still a factor, but it's family history of autoimmune disorders rather than diabetes. In my case, my father has a type of vasculitis that causes his immune system to attack non-vital parts of his own body (veins, bloody vessels, lungs and kidneys - nobody needs them), and after inheriting the flawed genes, my own immune system decides that the insulin-producing beta cells in my pancreas are the enemy.

That leaves me with all of the 'benefits' of Types I and II, effectively. I get all of the fun of calculating and injecting doses of insulin, while none of the weight-loss! Lucky me.

If I could only have been Type II DM. Then I could just take a pill and diet.

Re:Error in TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Feom what you're it sounds like the cause *of the diagnosis*.

Re:Error in TFA

[sprior]

I guess we're getting into semantics, but it's not a "root cause" of the disease which is what everyone here means when you say cause. Yes the symptom of high blood glucose does in itself cause other problems and because you can't cure the disease itself you end up managing the side effect of the disease to avoid the side effect of the symptom. But saying this is a cause of the disease is like a situation where a horse drawn wagon upsets an apple cart and the apples fly off and break a window. By your terms the apple cart is a cause of the accident. While the apples did cause damage, you wouldn't have that damage in the first place if the wagon which is the real cause hadn't come by.

Re:Error in TFA

[Raenex]

Definition and diagnosis should not be confused.

Indeed, though that seems to be exactly what you are doing.

By definition, diabetes stands for excessive urination. Mellitus stands for sweet urine (sweet because the only way to diagnose in the early days was tasting). This is how diabetes mellitus is defined.

That sounds like an old-school definition being taken too literally in the modern world. Here's what an actual medical dictionary says:

"a variable disorder of carbohydrate metabolism caused by a combination of hereditary and environmental factors and usually characterized by inadequate secretion or utilization of insulin, by excessive urine production, by excessive amounts of sugar in the blood and urine, and by thirst, hunger, and loss of weightâ"see type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes"

Notice that urine is just one characterization.

and for type 2:

"diabetes mellitus of a common form that develops especially in adults and most often in obese individuals and that is characterized by hyperglycemia resulting from impaired insulin utilization coupled with the body's inability to compensate with increased insulin production"

Re:Sorry folks...

[girlintraining]

Just commenting to undo a bad mod. Pity about the good mods, but dems da breaks.

You need to stop doing that. Here on slashdot we have +1, Insightful (I agree with your political statement), -1, Flamebait (You said something bad about [religion]... Die Heathen!), +1, Funny (You said something obvious, but in a novel way), +1 Underrated (A lot of people are going to downmod you for this in meta, but I love you in secret), and -1, Overrated (I'm too cowardly to delurk and tell you why I disagree).

Your post clearly indicates you are unaware of this and are attempting to moderate based on a novel concept known as 'merit'. I hope they mod you into oblivion, you community-destroying monster! You corrupt everything /. moderation is about. It's a debasement of our esteemed institution of knee-jerk moderation. :)

P.S. Thanks.

That was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obvious that obesity is related to problems of the biological clock. Their clock is always telling them it's lunch time.

Re:That was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that plenty obese people don't, in fact, eat any more than you? Not saying diet doesn't matter, but genetics and lack of excercise dominate.

Re:That was obvious

[slackware 3.6]

Maybe they don't eat more than me but it's what they eat that matters. No one got fat from cucumbers unless they inserted way to many.

Re:That was obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

you're full of shit... Obese people DO eat more than normal. They don't realize it because the way they eat is normal to them.

I used to be obese, and am now closer to a normal weight. My diet absolutely changed.

I visit my sister from time to time who is also obese. After I eat my healthier diet for a while, I visit her, and eat the same food she does.. and I get literally sick. She will say the same as you... she doesn't eat more than a normal person. But it's so fatty, greasy, disgusting. It's not just the quantity of food, but the type.

If you really believe that, you really need to talk to a nutritionist. The idea that obese people eat the same as normal is an idea from decades ago. No nutritionist will tell you that today.

Re:That was obvious

[rrohbeck]

Mod parent up. What you eat determines how many calories you eat. Your digestive system senses volume, not calories. So if you eat easily digested simple carbs, you'll be empty within an hour and your stomach tells the brain "Feed Me!"
Hence eat fiber, protein, good fats, no simple carbs, yada yada.

Re:That was obvious

[paenguin]

Your digestive system senses volume, not calories.

Not true. Your digestive system senses volume and density. It's just not very good at sensing density of highly processed (condensed) food.

Re:FIRST

[Anonymous Coward]

A warrior's drink.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Sorry folks...

[cammoblammo]

Just commenting to undo a bad mod. Pity about the good mods, but dems da breaks.

Your post clearly indicates you are unaware of this and are attempting to moderate based on a novel concept known as 'merit'. I hope they mod you into oblivion, you community-destroying monster! You corrupt everything /. moderation is about. It's a debasement of our esteemed institution of knee-jerk moderation. :)

P.S. Thanks.

No, it was a knee jerk downmod of some thoughtful idiot who was making sense in a rational, logical yet fair manner. My knee jerked so badly I accidentally clicked an upmod. It was purely unintentional, I promise.

First post thats subject is too long to fit in fie

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you gaffets

CRYPTO-CHROME

[THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER]

Doesn't Google already have that name trademarked or patented?

Link Down. Try Here Instead...

[RandCraw]

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/09-15BiologicalClock.asp

not the solution

[hareball101]

And how does this relate to the fact that children are getting Diabetes type 2 younger and younger, at an increasing rate?

The answer is simple; carbohydrates.

Most of our carbs come from plants more closely related to grass(corn, wheat), than to a vegetable

Solution: eat grass fed animals, eat lots of root and leafy green vegetables and some fruit ... ditch the soda, pizza, pasta, burgers, donuts, etc.

Re:not the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is simpler... just balance your carb intake with fiber. And no, fiber pills don't count as that is a one time hit trying to offset carbs somewhere else in your digestive track. Balance them together.

Re:not the solution

[level_headed_midwest]

Perhaps the nearly immobile lives that youngsters live has something to do with it as well? Recess and gym are a fraction of the time they used to be, if they even still exist in schools. You can't have kids memorizing material for the federally mandated achievement tests that determine a larger and larger chunk of cash-strapped school districts' budgets if they are outside running around. If that isn't enough "persuasion" to cut recess and gym, the fear of lawsuits if little Brayden (or Aiden or Kayden or Jayden) catches a hangnail as he trips over his own feet and falls into the mandatory two-foot-thick rubber mat on the playground will. It's no better at home. There is the same worry about Brayden catching a hangnail as at school, but now since it is unsupervised, you have to worry about (the one in ten million chance of) a child molester kidnapping Jimmy! Go out and supervise Brayden yourself? And miss watching "Jersey Shore?" That's ludicrous! Better to have Brayden stay inside.

Re:not the solution

[hareball101]

I understand what your saying, and you do make some good points, but I don't think humans should get obese due to lack of exercise. Some exercise is important, but only really important as a muscle builder. Walking everyday is all that should be needed.

Weight with a normal diet self regulating. You eat until you get full, and this is primarily run by the hormone Leptin. Leptin is secreted by your fat cells, and the more circulating in your body, the more your appetite is inhibited. Unfortunately, carbohydrates block the hormones message, by causing Leptin Resistance.

As you can see, this sets off a vicous cycle, where the only result can be overeating.

It actually makes me mad that animal fats have been demonised by the media, when in reality, it's the carbohydrates that are causing all the problems. Animal fat is good for you.

Re:not the solution

[Kergan]

Sounds like Atkins. According to some specialists, though, fructose (aka sugar, HFCS, etc.) is the carb you should be really worrying about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Re:not the solution

[bill_mcgonigle]

Most of our carbs come from plants more closely related to grass [msu.edu](corn, wheat), than to a vegetable

Um, yeah - vegetables have very few carbs. If you want carbs, go for the starchy grains.

This wasn't a problem until the last century. Either humans changed or something about the food supply changed. Surely a 20x increase in sugar intake per capita is coincidental - it must be the oatmeal.

Re:not the solution

[macs4all]

Sounds like Atkins. According to some specialists, though, fructose (aka sugar, HFCS, etc.) is the carb you should be really worrying about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Um, what you call "sugar" is not fructose. It is sucrose.

Re:not the solution

[hareball101]

Well what you said made sense up until the last sentence... but carbohydrates, i.e. your oatmeal, breaks down into sugar in the bloodstream.

Re:not the solution

[bill_mcgonigle]

but carbohydrates, i.e. your oatmeal, breaks down into sugar in the bloodstream.

It's largely fiber, but yes, your body runs on glucose. You're going to get that glucose from starches or gluconeogenesis. What's important about the effect of various starches is the rate at which you get those glucoses. HFCS = instant glucose. Oatmeal = 2-3 hour slow release of glucose. Since your enzymes are rate-limited, your foods should be as well.

Re:not the solution

[hareball101]

You're absolutely right about the rate of glucose, that is effectively what we call the glycemic index, and lower GI means slower energy... which is good. But there is another source of energy, called Ketones, that the body can run on. When there is less glucose, the body can convert fat to ketones to produce energy.

Re:not the solution

[bill_mcgonigle]

When there is less glucose, the body can convert fat to ketones to produce energy.

Yes, certainly you can get ketosis from lyposis, but you're also going to get gluconeogenesis at the same time, in healthy people. The acetyl-CoA can be inserted into the Krebs Cycle directly, and that can definitely provide energy, but the body is really greedy for glucose and will rob for it.

I suspect if you're active enough the effects will balance out - the Inuit seem to do OK. They also eat a specific diet with lots of protective fatty acids, though. I have some friends who suppose an all-bacon diet will serve them as well...

Re:not the solution

[Raenex]

What's important about the effect of various starches is the rate at which you get those glucoses. HFCS = instant glucose. Oatmeal = 2-3 hour slow release of glucose. Since your enzymes are rate-limited, your foods should be as well.

It's been mentioned a fair amount on Slashdot: fructose seems to be the worst part about the high sugar intake, not the glycemic index. High-GI foods like rice are popular in Asia without the corresponding diabetes. Also, there have been a lot of studies now that explain how fructose can lead to diabetes.

Of course, if you already have Type II diabetes, you're better off eating a diet that isn't high in carbs.

Re:not the solution

[Kergan]

And sucrose is one glucose bound to a fructose, the latter of which gets metabolized in the liver -- per the video I linked to.

interesting protein

[kermidge]

If memory serves, wasn't cryptochrome mentioned in the article last week about the cell in the sea trout's nose that apparently helps it navigate by using Earth's magnetic field? And a fellow provided two links to journal articles wherein the same protein featured in some not-well-understood fashion having to do with birds using geomagnetic nav?

If so, strikes me as one very interesting protein.

I love cryptochrome

[93 Escort Wagon]

I used to shoot with it all the time - especially loved the way it captured blues and didn't overemphasize reds. Of course that was back before I switched to a camera with a digital sensor.

Just for diabetes?

[gmuslera]

Being able to control our biological clocks looks like having the potential to change our entire lives, even for non diabetic people.

Diabetes type 2

[Jukeman]

Just what we need, another treatment for Diabetes type 2; how about someone work on a cure, then treatment will not be necessarily.

Percent of calories absorbed...

[Covalent]

There have been many studies regarding this phenomenon, but most of them show that the effect is small. In other words, if you eat foods at the "right" time, you might absorb fewer or burn more of them than if you eat at the "wrong" time. However, because the effect is small, eating 4,000 calories a day will still result in obesity long-term, regardless of what time of day you're eating them.

Simply put, our bodies evolved to pack on the pounds in time of plenty and then miserly dole out that fat during lean times. During the present day in the 1st world (a time of plenty of easily-digested calories), the body just packs on the weight unless calorie restriction and exercise are done regularly.

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Still peddling the overweight myth...

[advocate_one]

They're still pushing the myth that obesity causes Type 2 Diabetes.

So wrong according to latest research.

Re:Still peddling the overweight myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

I very much agree. I was headed towards type 2 diabetes with an A1C of 6.3 and increasing. A year ago I had surgery for sleep apnea. Now my A1C is 4.8. No lie and my Dr was amazed. Not getting enough deep sleep while fighting for breath (sleep apnea) kept certain hormones high which required higher than normal(during sleep) glucose chronically for years. This was apparently my root cause of path to type 2 diabetes.

Oh yea! I say the Biological Clock is involved Diabetes.

Re:Still peddling the overweight myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK in biologic systems cause is effect and effect is cause. That having been said, I have had Insulin Dependent Type 2 Diabetes. Clearly that is past tense statement. I cut my weight by 41 kg and my blood sugar is stable. The process was well described on the RebootYourLife website. I now require no insulin and have no instabilities. During this time I have also learned that Sleeping is probably the most important thing to controlling weight though nutrition is very important as well. Essentially if you eat the right stuff you will not over eat and you will stabilize your weight at a normal weight. Blood sugar instabilites are apparently related to improper nutrition and it would appear that they are related to sleep depivation.

I would like to say without a doubt that weight gain is not a cause but rather an effect of Type 2 Diabetes becoming by feedback its own cause. It disrupts sleep and it causes eating to become unstable as well. But mark my description initially obesity is not a cause but rather an effect of Type 2 Diabetes because high blood sugar causes weight gain. Low blood sugar causes over eating which causes high blood sugar, insulin release and more low blood sugar. It must be understood that the medical doctors do not know a D**N thing about nutrition and they know even less about how to lose weight and fix the problems.

Management of Diabetes (both types) is intensly individual and there may be multiple types with the definitions as there are definitely many different patterns here.

Re:Still peddling the overweight myth...

[moeinvt]

Interesting. I lean strongly toward the "nature" side of the nature/nurture argument, so I think this is good material. However, you can see how the overweight "myth" is at least theoretically compelling.

We're definitely witnessing an observable phenomenon in the (American) population with higher rates of obesity and higher rates of child obesity coupled with a higher incidence of type2 diabetes occurring earlier in life. I don't think the data is in dispute, so obviously "something" is going on. It seems odd that there could be an evolutionary force that was so strongly and so suddenly selecting for the "diabetes genes". This is at most a 1-2 generation phenomenon. The fact that it has occurred contemporaneously with major changes in the "typical" diet makes it hard to discount a correlation. Maybe it's not "obesity". Perhaps mega-doses of HFCS or some other additives are "triggering" these genes, even in people who are able to maintain "healthy" weight?
This change in the population has occurred so rapidly that it's very difficult to dismiss a lifestyle-related driver as a "myth" despite research to the contrary.

Re:Still peddling the overweight myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

Diabetes 2 is not caused by obesity. Both are results of unhealthy lifestyle.
http://vadymweekly.blogspot.com/2012/06/diabetes-pandemic-you-will-have.html

Re:Still peddling the overweight myth...

[swb]

From what I've read and seen (guys like Gary Taubes and Robert Lustig), the amount of sugar (which includes sugar, HFCS and other similar sweeteners comprised of fructose/glucose combinations) consumption per capita has increased tremendously over the last century.

Equally important is the increase in carbohydrate consumption since most food guidelines switched to a "low fat" paradigm about 1980. Carbs are 4 kcals per gram, fat is 9, so switching to a "low fat" diet is essentially a "high carb" diet since it requires > 2x increase in carb consumption to make up for the lost calories. For most people this results in a large increase in starch consumption which is metabolically similar to sugar consumption.

Unfortunately there hasn't been enough science associated with carbohydrate consumption done because there is such a broad acceptance of the "low fat/high carb" dietary paradigm because so many researchers are tied to it in terms of their careers, intellectual standing and mindset.

Personally, I think sugar is a major culprit, with fructose being the worst member, followed fairly closely by simple starches. I also think there is some kind of metabolic programming that occurs early in life that makes obesity hard to shake in later life, even on strictly reduced carbohydrate diets.

 

Re:Still peddling the overweight myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* Just because it is on the internet, doesn't make it true.

Your great link is another great scam site. Type 2 diabetes is triggered by obesity in almost all cases. Unless you missed the fact that virtually ALL type 2 diabetics are fat and/or sedentary?

Yes, you can believe whatever the lie you want. Like Type 2 diabetes has nothing to do with being fat or being fat is caused by "my slow metabolism" not overeating. Laws of thermodynamics would disagree, but I guess those are "myths" too!!

Liver transplant cures type-2 Diabetes

[Anonymous Coward]

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Layout/Includes/TOINEW/ArtWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIPU%2F2012%2F07%2F13&ViewMode=HTML&PageLabel=12&EntityId=Ar01207&AppName=1

Millions of years of evolution and it breaks now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this so called chemical is a demonstration on how those idiotic commercials for ridiculous drugs that claim to cure something but the side effects warnings are everything from growing an extra appendage, over production of the large intestine, insanity and death.

The biological clock evolved with humans and every other animal for millions of years, it is NOT the cause or even a factor with Type II diabetes or obesity. The bio clock didn't just break 40 years ago. BUT some fool scientists just cant accept that the crap they have been putting in food and medicines for the last 40 years are the more likely cause instead they need more garbage chemicals to counteract the previous garbage in food that is likely causing both obesity and diabetes. Well perhaps obesity also has the contributing cause of the vast majority of Americans eating way way too much calorie laden, chemically enhanced food and doing almost no physical activity to burn it off.

It is almost amazing how scientists who claim to be experts cant even get such a simple observation correct, diabetes type II and obesity did not come about in the numbers of today until after the government, food and medical industries all started promoting low fat diets and pushing their chemically enhanced food products as the cure, with the medical industry then pushing all kinds of medication to counteract the effects of the food.

Go back to eating the food your grandmother cooked you or just eat food that doesn't require a degree in chemistry to read the label and a factory to make it and you will see both obesity and diabetes type II drop in rates. This worked on my brother, he just started eating normal food and a year later the diabetes is not really an issue at all now.

Epidemic

[dutchwhizzman]

A disease is epidemic if it is contagious and a certain percentage of the population is infected. Even though (morbid) obesity is common enough for the percentage requirement to be fulfilled, obesity is not a contagious disease. It is completely self inflicted, because people that have it got it by eating too much and/or the wrong diet.

The only mitigation for that is, once your body has made the fat reserves that make you obese, you can diet but they won't go away. Sure, they'll get smaller, but once you stop your diet and exercise that got your weight back to normal, your body will try and restore those reserves. That means that you'll have to be much more careful about your diet for the rest of your life, once you've gained weight, even if you lost the weight afterwards. Liposuction does help in that, because the cells are removed that store the fat, but you really have to ask yourself if that is what you want, given the fact that a healthy diet and enough exercise will probably make you heal without the procedure.

Calling obesity epidemic makes it sound like it's something that people got due to something out of their control, while it's something they really did to themselves, or their children.

Re:Epidemic

[Rich0]

I'm not convinced that obesity is controllable - if anything high body weight is just like high blood sugar and is just a symptom of an underlying problem.

It seems to me that one of two things is true:
1. People today just are psychologically different from generations past and eat way too much food voluntarily. Maybe we all committed too many sins in our childhood or something. I've yet to hear a compelling explanation for why most of the US population voluntarily overeats.

2. There is some underlying physical issue that causes improper regulation of diet. Many proposals have been offered for this, including changes in diet/etc.

While blaming the victim may be convenient you still need to deal with a few issues:
A. Whether self-inflicted or not, the majority of the people around you are obsese and are going to get diabetes.
B. Those people are going to need a lot more medical care, which is expensive.
C. Being the majority, those people have the power to compel you to help pay for their care.

So, whether you think they are morally deficient for C, or helpless victims, it is in everybody's interests to figure out what is going on and find some way of treating it. If the issue is #2 keep in mind that simply making food less available is simply going to make everybody REALLY hungry, and hungry people don't tend to make for a happy society (there is a reason the Romans made bread free).

Re:Epidemic

[moeinvt]

I think it's merely the fact that throughout most of human evolution, the vast amount of our labor has been dedicated to acquiring enough food to survive. It's no surprise that we're "hard wired" to prefer foods with high caloric density. This is not a problem when food is scarce in general and there is rarely an opportunity for excess consumption, especially of fats and sugars.
We still have that built in drive, but now live in an environment(USA anyway) with an over-abundance of cheap high calorie food which has been chemically engineered to satiate that desire. Couple that with the psychological warfare conducted by the food industry, and I think the result is predictable.

Chemical That Affects Biological Clock

[Anonymous Coward]

And gives you insomnia.

We don't solve an epidemic by easing the symptoms

[kekePower]

"Good Calories, Bad Calories" and "Why we get fat, and what to do about it" both by Gary Taubes (www.garytaubes.com) explains why Carbohydrates is the monster of today. Please, please, Please at least read the latter book. A low-carb diet will solve a lot of issues we see in today's world when it comes to obesity and the morbidly obese and their sufferings of heart failures, cancer, asthma, diabetes type 2 and skeleton (joints) tear. Carbohydrates is the enemy, not fat, not obese people, not inactivity, not TV, not video games. Carbohydrates. If you want more info, check out "The 4-hour body" by Tim Ferriss. (www.fourhourworkweek.com and www.fourhourbody.com).

Link has "account suspended."

[Stirling Newberry]

Does anyone have a good current link?

Re:Link has "account suspended."

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this:
Link

Re:Epidemic / terminology

[moeinvt]

I agree with your point about obesity being largely linked to lifestyle choices but I don't think the use of "epidemic" implies "contagion". I heard a lecture where a researcher was presenting evidence suggesting a causal link between the incidence of cancer and proliferation of petro-chemicals in the environment. He described cancer as "an epidemic" in the U.S. merely due to the % of people who will get some form of cancer in their lifetime.

Anec-data

[boneglorious]

So that's two anecdotes from a pair of the closest relatives you can get...Ima need a few before I find your study to be statistically significant.

Re:Anec-data

[boneglorious]

(And to be clear, I'm not arguing that there is no cause-and-effect between overeating and obesity, but my anec-data tells me that at least some people that are clinically obese don't eat or worse than more than usual, they just have a completely different body type. So I'm just arguing against applying your assertion to *all* obese people. And your methodology.)

Re:Treatment woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because of something called AGES and caused by your high consumption of sugar and flour (refined carbohydrates). By coincidence refined carbohydrates are also the cause of type 2 diabetes - well, it is if you are in anywhere but the USA (where it is strangely regarded that Fat causes diabetes as most obese people also have diabetes!!).

Meth?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

1. Increase your calorie consumption by making you more active and less tired.
2. Make you feel less inclined to eat the pint of Ben and Jerry's in the first place.

Methamphetamine!

(or if you'd like to stay legal, those FDA approved diet pills which destroy your heart valves instead of your teeth).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

How about a ketogenic diet?

[swb]

How about research into that? The reputable sources and limited studies show that obese people with type II diabetes almost all seem to revert to a non-diabetic status once they go on a ketogenic (very low carbohydrate diet).

While there are certainly some portion of type II diabetes sufferers who will not respond to, people like Robert Lustig seem to believe that low carb diets have an extremely high success rate in basically eliminating type II diabetes.

But not eating carbs doesn't sell drugs or allow people to go on eating food toxified with high levels of HFCS.

Atkins for vegetarians really sucks.

[billstewart]

I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Our bodies may do just fine eating animal parts, considering that we've done it since at least the time we became apes, and we've been eating cooked animal parts since we figured out fire a million years or so ago, but it's a pretty hostile way to treat animals, just because they happen to be tasty and easy to catch. I'm also fat, and could stand to lose weight, but my blood sugar is just fine, stays nicely in the middle, not too high or too low.

Most of the scientific studies of Atkins have found that it really causes weight loss by reducing your calorie intake, while keeping you from getting hungry while you do so, by tricking your metabolism into not doing all the things that tell you it's time to eat a lot. (And your chart left out the body's glycogen stores, BTW, which get used up before burning body fat.) All nice in theory.

So back during one of the previous resurgences of the Atkins fad, I looked at what I'd be able to eat if I tried it. Eggs, cheese, yogurt, no grain or fruit, no beans, lots of green veggies and rabbit food. BORING! A lot more monotonous than eating all those with meat. And I'm mildly allergic to eggs and dairy, so I'd be sneezing more.

No thanks. I'd rather eat fewer calories and substitute more garlic and peppers for the butter and salt. What I really need to do is step away from the computer and go do some cardio exercise; tai chi just doesn't count.

Re:Atkins for vegetarians really sucks.

[mug funky]

add spices and nothing is boring...

New Diabetes Treatment

[Anonymous Coward]

a low frequency (with a period of 11.5 minutes low power low current of 0.4 micoamps) square wave can do the same thing for $1 when the Chinese make this simple device.

look here:- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792735/

Ultra-low microcurrent in the management of diabetes mellitus, hypertension and chronic wounds: Report of twelve cases and discussion of mechanism of action
Bok Y. Lee,1,[env] Noori AL-Waili,2 Dean Stubbs,3 Keith Wendell,4 Glenn Butler,5 Thia AL-Waili,6 and Ali AL-Waili7
Author information Article notes Copyright and License information
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
Go to:
Abstract

Oxidative stress plays a major role in the pathogenesis of both types of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases including hypertension. The low levels of antioxidants accompanied by raised levels of markers of free radical damage play a major role in delaying wound healing. Ultra-low microcurrent presumably has an antioxidant effect, and it was shown to accelerate wound healing. The purpose of the study is to investigate the efficacy of ultra-low microcurrent delivered by the Electro Pressure Regeneration Therapy (EPRT) device (EPRT Technologies-USA, Simi Valley, CA) in the management of diabetes, hypertension and chronic wounds. The EPRT device is an electrical device that sends a pulsating stream of electrons in a relatively low concentration throughout the body. The device is noninvasive and delivers electrical currents that mimic the endogenous electric energy of the human body. It is a rechargeable battery-operated device that delivers a direct current (maximum of 3 milliAmperes) of one polarity for 11.5 minutes, which then switched to the opposite polarity for another 11.5 minutes. The resulting cycle time is approximately 23min or 0.000732 Hz and delivers a square wave bipolar current with a voltage ranging from 5V up to a maximum of 40 V. The device produces a current range of 3 mA down to 100 nA. Twelve patients with long standing diabetes, hypertension and unhealed wounds were treated with EPRT. The patients were treated approximately for 3.5 h/day/5 days a week. Assessment of ulcer was based on scale used by National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel Consensus Development Conference. Patients were followed-up with daily measurement of blood pressure and blood glucose level, and their requirement for medications was recorded. Treatment continued from 2-4 months according to their response. Results showed that diabetes mellitus and hypertension were well controlled after using this device, and their wounds were markedly healed (30-100%). The patients either reduced their medication or completely stopped after the course of treatment. No side effects were reported. The mechanism of action was discussed.
Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, wound, ultra-low microcurrent
Go to:
Introduction

Diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases are challenging medical and social problems. Patients with diabetes mellitus are at a higher risk of developing vascular dysfunction and hypertension. The real etiology of these diseases is not well understood. However, cumulative evidence suggests that oxidative stress may play a key role in the development of diseases. It has been found that oxidative stress is associated with several cardiovascular diseases, including atherosclerosis, hypertension, heart failure, stroke, and diabetes, and plays a fundamental role in endothelial dysfunction associated with these diseases 1-6. Further, oxidative stress plays a major role in the pathogenesis of both types of diabetes mellitus. High levels of free radicals and the decline of antioxidant defense mechanisms lead to damage of cellular organelles and enzymes, increased lipid peroxidation, and development of insulin resistance 7. The vascular and systemic complications in diabetes are associated with hyperglycemia-induced overproduction of reactive oxygen species 8,9. Other studies showed that overproduction of reactive oxygen and nitrogen specie

Dr. Fuhrman on Diabetes

[Paul Fernhout]

Might be helpful: http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/Diabetes.aspx
"How can we lower high glucose levels, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, lose weight and not need to take drugs such as insulin and sulfonylureas which cause weight gain? Here is the simple answer -- the best diet for humans to live longer in superior health is also the best diet for one with diabetes. That is a diet with a high nutrient per calorie ratio as described in my books, Eat To Live and Eat For Health. When one eats a diet predominating in nature's perfect foods -- green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds and limited amount of fresh fruit, it becomes relatively easy for people to eat as much as they want and still lose weight relatively quickly. This includes lots of great tasting food and great recipes, but no oil, butter, cheese, flour or sweets. My experience has demonstrated that those choosing to follow my nutritional recommendation will have their diabetes controlled astonishingly fast even before they have lost most of their excess weight."

Good luck to you and your dad.

Re:FIRST

[oPless]

Monday July 16 Wasn't a good day to FIRST POST (-1, offtopic)