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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.'"

14 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Treatment woo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  2. Re:Treatmen woo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.])

  3. My wife will just have to wait by cvtan · · Score: 5, Funny

    until there is a Treatwomen.

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  4. Cycloset by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Error in TFA by techno-vampire · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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  6. Re:Sorry folks... by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  7. That was obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:That was obvious by rrohbeck · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  8. Link Down. Try Here Instead... by RandCraw · · Score: 3, Informative
  9. not the solution by hareball101 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:not the solution by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

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  10. Re:Cryptochrome by rrohbeck · · Score: 3, Funny

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

  11. Re:don't get yer hopes up by wisnoskij · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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  12. Re:Treatmen woo! by Phrogman · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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