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

Re:Treatment woo!

[Anonymous Coward]

And well managed diabetics may yet still age more rapidly than non-diabetics. I am 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.])

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.

Link Down. Try Here Instead...

[RandCraw]

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

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: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.