Tag: insulin Posts

The American Heart association has just gone on record as recommending that sugar consumption be drastically reduced. I should point out that this is in stark contrast to their longly held assertions that saturated fat is the primary cause of heart disease, and carbohydrates essentially are harmless. So this is a warning to everyone that you should limit your sugar intake in the interest of good health. I personally wouldn’t be surprised at all if you’ll continue to see these ongoing shifts in policy, up to the point where the policy has completely changed to recommend that refined carbohydrates be cut-out or severely limited as well. I mean, if the research ultimately shows that refined carbohydrate (including sugar) was the significant contributor to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and the official position of the AHA was that these foods should form the basis of all heart-healthy diets, there could be […]

I do the odd post from time to time on health issues and current research I think is interesting. About a year ago I posted an article discussing how caffeine seems to have a negative influence on the body’s insulin signaling, which ultimately affects blood sugar levels in the blood. What this ultimately means is that caffeine might be a major contributing factor in the obesity epidemic, since high insulin levels in the blood promote the storage of fat and make it difficult to burn it. Here’s a recent 2008 study that investigated the effects of caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee on the body’s insulin and glucose systems. Why I think it’s interesting is that it’s one of the first studies that I’ve seen in a while that used coffee as the source of caffeine instead of caffeine pills. BACKGROUND: The ingestion of caffeine (5 mg/kg body weight) and a […]

I’ve posted a few times on this subject, but this is a new paper that’s hot off the presses. Once thought to help with weight loss, caffeine has recently been cast in a new light as actually contributing to weight gain. Even caffeinated diet pop can lead to weight gain, due to increased insulin secretion in the body. A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover study with periods of 7 days and washouts of 5 days comparing caffeine with placebo capsules was conducted. Participants were 16 healthy adults aged 18 to 22 years with a history of caffeine consumption. Blood samples from each subject were assayed for glucose, insulin, serum cortisol, DHEA, and androstenedione on the eighth day of each period after an overnight fast. Nighttime salivary melatonin was also measured. Insulin levels were significantly higher (by 1.80 muU/mL; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-3.28) after caffeine intake than after placebo. The homeostasis model […]

I was coming into work this morning, and I read this on the front page of the Vancouver Sun. This is pretty big news in the medical community. Apparently some researchers at UofT have found a way to reverse diabetes in Type 1 diabetic mice. This is exciting because it was always thought that type I diabetic people lost the ability to produce insulin because their own immune system completely destroyed the beta cells in the pancreas. However, the beta cells in these mice became active again once they had an injection. Here’s the original article. Also surprising is that this approach also seems to remove the symptoms of type II diabetes (sometimes called hyperinsulinemia or insulin resistance). In Type II, the body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin. So, to reduce the blood sugar in your body, your pancreas has to secrete far larger amounts than normal. This […]

Well, the time has come for me to give up caffeine once again. Why you might ask? Because I’m way too addicted to it, and I know how completely shitty it is for the body. Here are some reasons why caffeine sucks: It disrupts REM sleep, making you feel tired in the morning It increases cortisol, making you feel stressed out It distrupts the body’s glucose system, increasing insulin levels by as much as 50% It makes weight loss difficult since the body can’t burn fat with high levels of insulin in the blood The problem with working in a high tech industry is that there’s free pop. So, instead of just grabbing a cup of water, I usually grab a diet coke. Which is just so wrong. Some time this morning, Clay came up to my desk and noticed the two diet coke cans I had on my desk. […]