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Latest Insulin Resistance Articles
Insulin Resistance Article Archives
March 2012
Three risk factors-insulin resistance, fatty liver, and overweight/obesity-that are commonly associated with the onset of type 2 diabetes can each, by itself, substantially increase the risk of developing the disease. But in individuals that have all three factors working in combination, the risk of developing type 2 in a five-year period increases 14-fold.
0 comments - Posted Mar 24, 2012
February 2012
As a woman with diabetes, you may have noticed that you face unique challenges, from where to place your insulin pump, to pregnancy, to hormone fluctuations. Many diabetes books offer general diabetes advice, but few focus on women beyond just a short chapter. That is, until now.
3 comments - Posted Feb 20, 2012
Due to the rising rates of diabetes and other chronic diseases related to obesity, children are expected to have a shorter lifespan than their parents for the first time in modern history. One in every three children aged two to 19 years is overweight or obese, and one-third of all children born in the year 2000 are expected to develop diabetes during their lifetime.
0 comments - Posted Feb 4, 2012
November 2011
By now you're halfway through pregnancy. You've managed to get through the stresses of insulin shock in the first trimester and insulin resistance beginning in the second trimester, and you're well on your way toward your third trimester. Congratulations! A moment of applause, please.
1 comment - Posted Nov 2, 2011
October 2011
Welcome to the second trimester! By now, many type 1s are experiencing fewer hypoglycemic episodes, and insulin resistance is just beginning to rear its head. You're on the other side of the miscarriage worry hump and getting settled into the pregnancy routine. Congratulations! Take a few minutes each day to celebrate your successes and pat your stomach with a smile, knowing you are doing the best you can to give your growing child everything she needs.
0 comments - Posted Oct 26, 2011
August 2011
A Boston-based study has found that vitamin D supplements can reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in people with prediabetes by improving their beta cell functioning.
2 comments - Posted Aug 3, 2011
July 2011
Italian researchers have found that increased consumption of omega-3 fatty acids leads to a decrease in insulin resistance, a common precursor to the development of type 2 diabetes. It also improves lipid profiles and adiponectin levels. (Adiponectin is a protein that is involved in metabolizing glucose and fatty acids. Low levels are associated with insulin resistance, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and obesity.)
0 comments - Posted Jul 21, 2011
June 2011
Over the last decade, dramatic changes have occurred in our understanding of the onset and progression of prediabetes. Lightning speed changes have also occurred regarding the therapies available to achieve optimal blood glucose control. Even with all of this change, however, many old dogmas hang on. It's time to become aware of the new realities. In this article, I focus on two common old dogmas and the new realities.
2 comments - Posted Jun 16, 2011
May 2011
New Jersey's Hackensack University Medical Center has announced that it will partner with Dr. Camillo Ricordi to test a surgical procedure that could hold the key to a cure for type 1 diabetes.
11 comments - Posted May 18, 2011
April 2011
Canadian scientists have found that nobiletin, a substance found in high concentrations in tangerines, thwarted obesity and the onset of diabetes in lab mice. The researchers at the University of Western Ontario fed the mice a high-sugar, high-fat diet that mimicked the diet of many people in Western societies. One group of animals became obese, developing fatty livers and elevated levels of cholesterol and insulin-typical precursors to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But a second group of mice, given the flavonoid nobiletin, did not develop the symptoms of the first group. The nobiletin prevented fatty buildup in the liver by blocking the genes that control the production of fat.
4 comments - Posted Apr 30, 2011
Italian and Greek researchers conducting a meta-analysis* of the diets of more than 500,000 people have concluded that the Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that are common precursors to type 2 diabetes. Those factors include overweight or obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, high blood sugar, high triglyceride levels, high blood pressure, and high "bad" cholesterol.
The Mediterranean diet is high in fruit, vegetables, whole grain foods, and low-fat dairy products. Proteins include fish, legumes, poultry, tree nuts, and mono-unsaturated fatty acids from olive oil. Alcohol intake is moderate and almost always in conjunction with meals. Red meat is only an occasional menu item.
The scientists looked at 50 studies that involved more than 500,000 people, then extrapolated the effects of a Mediterranean diet from them. Although the meta-analysis pointed to the usefulness of the Mediterranean diet in fending off metabolic syndrome, its authors said that their conclusion is tentative, given the need for more research on the topic.
The study was published in the March 15 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
* A meta-analysis looks at a number of similar studies and tries to derive new and useful results from them by detecting common patterns among them.
0 comments - Posted Apr 12, 2011
While smoking is commonly associated with a higher risk of developing a serious disease, it's not often that second-hand smoke or being an ex-smoker is considered even riskier. If the disease is type 2 diabetes, however, it is.
0 comments - Posted Apr 5, 2011
March 2011
Michael Hamman is a 63-year-old contractor. He recalls, "I first was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes five or six years ago. I probably had elevated blood sugar well in advance of that, but I was unaware of it. I don't remember how high my blood sugar was at the time, but I think my A1C was 7.5%. My blood sugar's never really been awful. Since I started monitoring myself, my sugar readings are normally between 150 and 165. I think it was pushing 200 before I was medicated, but the medications brought it down. They started me on glyburide and I took that for a long time, and then the A1C was moving up again, so they added the metformin. The A1C now is down in the mid-sixes. They consider it controlled, not well controlled or as good as it could be, but certainly for someone my size, it's probably as good as you can get."
1 comment - Posted Mar 25, 2011
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted an application to review dapagliflozin, a drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes that is being developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca.
0 comments - Posted Mar 22, 2011
Evolution works in strange ways. What serves as an advantage at one point in time can sometimes prove a problem later, when the world has changed. It looks like that might be the case with type 2 diabetes, according to researchers from San Diego, California.
2 comments - Posted Mar 21, 2011
February 2011
Researchers at the Children's Hospital in Boston, led by Umut Ozcan, MD, have found a regulatory protein that lowers blood sugar when it is high due to either lack of insulin or a decreased sensitivity to insulin.
0 comments - Posted Feb 24, 2011
January 2011
Taking 10,000 steps a day, or walking about five miles, is very, very good for you. It's even better than walking 3,000 steps a day, which is also extremely beneficial if you walk briskly enough to do it in 30 minutes. The 10,000 steps philosophy is not new--there's even a weight-loss book or two on the topic. But now the 10,000 step regimen has also been linked to an increase in insulin sensitivity in middle-aged adults.
1 comment - Posted Jan 20, 2011
Keeping the lights on all night might keep away the monsters under the bed, but it also keeps away the "hormone of darkness," melatonin, according to a new study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Melatonin, which is secreted into the blood by the brain's pineal gland at night, is involved in the circadian rhythm. Scientists believe that disrupting circadian rhythms can contribute to metabolic disease. Specifically, melatonin receptor genes have been linked to type 2 diabetes. Melatonin is also a powerful antioxidant that may help prevent cancer.
3 comments - Posted Jan 19, 2011
December 2010
With nearly 16 million Americans living today with pre-diabetes, a condition that is the precursor to type 2 diabetes, and half of all Americans expected to have some form of diabetes by the year 2020, healthy eating is more important than ever (1,2). But here is some good news: a recent scientific study shows that incorporating almonds into your diet can help treat and possibly prevent type 2 diabetes, as well as cardiovascular disease.
0 comments - Posted Dec 15, 2010
October 2010
European researchers have reported that when they transplanted fecal matter from healthy thin people into obese people with pre-diabetes, the latter group's insulin sensitivity notably increased. (Insulin sensitivity is the body's ability to properly use the insulin hormone to regulate the amount of glucose in the bloodstream. Pre-diabetes exists when increasing resistance to insulin creates higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, a precondition to the onset of full-blown type 2 diabetes.)
1 comment - Posted Oct 19, 2010
A national epidemiologic study finds a strong, consistent correlation between adult diabetes and particulate air pollution that persists after adjustment for other risk factors like obesity and ethnicity, report researchers from Children's Hospital Boston. The relationship was seen even at exposure levels below the current EPA safety limit.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2010
September 2010
New research findings reveal that one of America's favorite colorful fruits, blueberries, have properties that help to improve factors related to pre-diabetes and decrease inflammation in obese men and women. Chronic low-grade inflammation related to obesity contributes to insulin resistance, a major factor in the development of type 2 diabetes. "This is an excellent example of the importance of clinical trials to building our knowledge-base in helping to improve public health," said Steven Heymsfield, PBRC Executive Director
0 comments - Posted Sep 21, 2010
Type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease are two distressing, but increasingly common, diseases seen in our aging population. At some point in the future, they may well overwhelm the healthcare system.
0 comments - Posted Sep 5, 2010
The routine breakdown of old bone during skeletal growth has an important role to play in regulating blood sugar, according to Columbia University Medical Center researchers. The process, known as resorption, goes on throughout life. It stimulates insulin release and sugar absorption, helping healthy people maintain normal blood glucose levels. The new study, published in Cell, suggests that skeletal changes could causes diabetes for some and that possible treatments for type 2 diabetes could come from the bone-insulin connection.
0 comments - Posted Sep 4, 2010
August 2010
Insulin-resistant obese women lost more weight after 12 weeks on a low-carbohydrate diet than they did on a low-fat diet, according to a study conducted by the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno. (The study was funded by Jenny Craig, a company that sells diet foods.)
0 comments - Posted Aug 7, 2010
July 2010
We have known for several years that Hepatitis C, a common cause of liver cirrhosis and cancer, also makes people three to four times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes. In studying the insulin resistance of 29 people with Hepatitis C, Australian researchers have confirmed that they have high insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. However, almost all insulin resistance occurs in muscle, with little or none in the liver, a very surprising finding given that Hepatitis C is a liver disease.
0 comments - Posted Jul 21, 2010
A diet including coconut oil, a medium chain fatty acid (MCFA), helps combat insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the inability of cells to respond to insulin and take in glucose for energy. The pancreas tries to compensate for insulin resistance by producing even more insulin, but eventually glucose accumulates in the bloodstream. Over time, insulin resistance and obesity can lead to pre-diabetes or full-blown type 2 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2010
June 2010
One of the factors that increases the risk of acquiring type 2 diabetes is excess body fat. So it makes sense that losing weight has always been one of the first lines of defense against the disease. Yet people who are slender -skinny, even- sometimes develop type 2. Why is that? Does the fact that a slender person can acquire type 2 negate the need for weight control?
0 comments - Posted Jun 18, 2010
May 2010
Both genetic components and environmental factors play a role in most chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes. In the same way that researchers use a Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) to evaluate the role of genetic factors in disease, scientists at Stanford University have used an Environmental-Wide Association Study (EWAS) to evaluate environmental factors on diabetes.
0 comments - Posted May 29, 2010
CINCINNATI - The popular diabetes medication metformin works in different fashion than the current widely accepted view. This new finding could lead to wider use of the drug-particularly in people with cancer.
1 comment - Posted May 4, 2010
April 2010
A team of researchers from Case Western University published an article revealing their invention of a "smart" insulin molecule that binds considerably less to cancer receptors and self-assembles under the skin. To provide a slow-release form of insulin, the compound self-assembles under the skin by "stapling" itself together with zinc ions. Zinc staples connect the pieces of the insulin puzzle together to create a functional protein.
0 comments - Posted Apr 23, 2010
March 2010
According to researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine, obesity and metabolic syndrome may be partially brought on by intestinal bacteria that increase appetite and insulin resistance. The two can lead to overeating and high blood sugar levels - both important factors in the eventual onset of type 2 diabetes. Perhaps even more interesting, the scientists found that the bacteria can be transferred from one mouse to another, creating increased appetite and insulin resistance in an animal that had previously experienced neither.
0 comments - Posted Mar 26, 2010
January 2010
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Diabetes may hasten progression to dementia in older people with mild thinking impairment, new research shows.
2 comments - Posted Jan 19, 2010
December 2009
A gene named HHEX/IDE, which has already been implicated in the development of type 2 diabetes (see research article), may also contribute to childhood obesity. While the gene does not appear to affect birth weight and does not necessarily predispose an adult to become obese, it may set the stage for obesity in some children.
0 comments - Posted Dec 16, 2009
Chevy Chase, MD- According to a new study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), youth with type 1 diabetes have now been found to have abnormal insulin resistance. Having abnormal insulin resistance appears to negatively affect heart, blood vessel and exercise function in this population.
7 comments - Posted Dec 5, 2009
October 2009
"Ask any of the elite who have become truly massive beasts which anabolic substance has had the most profound effect upon their physique, and the answer from the largest mammals will unanimously be insulin." That's a quote from Iron Magazine, a publication for body builders. Apparently, injecting insulin for its anabolic properties is not uncommon among the "massive beasts," as several body-building websites actually contain instructions on how to do it and what types of insulin to use.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2009
August 2009
Endocrinologists at the University of Chicago say that lack of sufficient sleep may contribute to insulin resistance and decreased glucose tolerance, two conditions that up the long-term risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Aug 14, 2009
May 2009
Humanin (HN) is a mitochondrial peptide* that in some research has shown the ability to protect against the death of neurons, the devastating consequence of diseases like Alzheimer's. According to the leader of a research team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in the Bronx, however, it also significantly improves the insulin sensitivity of diabetic rats and sharply drops their glucose levels.
2 comments - Posted May 20, 2009
April 2009
Understanding which proteins help control blood glucose during and after exercise could lead to new drug therapies or more effective exercise to prevent type 2 diabetes and other health problems associated with high blood sugar.
0 comments - Posted Apr 16, 2009
My whole childhood, I was a bit of a pudgy girl. At the age of eight, I weighed over 110 pounds, wore a woman's size 8, and stood a mere five feet tall. I wasn't grossly obese, by any means, but it was enough to keep me off the cheerleading squad and out of the popular crowd at school. I didn't really have any health issues besides the weight.
27 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2009
March 2009
Whenever Diabetes Health publishes an article about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), we receive mountains of printed material from corn industry advocates. They argue that the effects of HFCS cannot be extrapolated from research because the "studies look at the effects of fructose independently." They claim, in the words of Christopher Mohr, MS, RD, LDN, of the Corn Refiners Association, that "the absence of glucose makes pure fructose fundamentally different from HFCS."
14 comments - Posted Mar 11, 2009
July 2007
Diabetes and pre-diabetes are associated with a seventy-five percent increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. Research has already shown that insulin resistance, with its accompanying high levels of circulating insulin, increases brain and spinal cord inflammation markers and neurotoxic peptides (molecules that cause brain and nervous system damage), just like early Alzheimer's.
0 comments - Posted Jul 28, 2007
April 2007
A recent Joslin-led study has identified the insulin receptor as an important protein that promotes islet cell growth in mice whose bodies are unable to use insulin properly, or are insulin resistant, a precursor to type 2 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Apr 23, 2007
January 2003
If your teenager has high blood pressure, researchers in the Czech Republic suggest taking steps to ward off insulin resistance. They add that high blood pressure is also associated with low folate levels and a high homocysteine level.
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2003
People who live in poor neighborhoods may be at higher risk for Insulin Resistance Syndrome (IRS), regardless of income or education levels, according to results from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study.
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2003
December 2002
Women who have repeated miscarriages are likely to be insulin-resistant, according to researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2002
November 2002
A committee of experts from the American College of Endocrinology (ACE) and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) reports that as many as one in three Americans have Insulin Resistance Syndrome, or pre-diabetes - a condition that can lead to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2002
August 2002
Mama told you to drink your milk. Now there is evidence that she might have been inadvertently protecting you from developing insulin resistance syndrome (IRS) during your young adult years.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2002
August 2001
The insulin-resistance drug metformin (Glucophage) has been shown to improve more than just insulin sensitivity in the body.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2001
May 2001
A protein in fat cells may cause insulin resistance, say researchers from Harvard Medical School.
0 comments - Posted May 1, 2001
February 2001
Children experience insulin resistance during puberty whether or not they will develop type 2 diabetes in adulthood, according to a new study by researchers in California and Alabama, who said changes were consistent across all subgroups of gender, ethnicity and obesity. Findings suggest the possibility of preventing type 2 diabetes during this phase of adolescence through dietary and physical activity intervention, says Michael I. Goran, PhD, of the University of Southern California. Dr. Goran and colleagues published their findings in the November 2001 issue of Diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2001
September 2000
Normal C-peptide levels for a fasting test are generally considered to be anything between 0.5 nanograms (ng) per millileter (ml) and 3 ng/ml, although people who do not have diabetes may occasionally stray out of this range. The following is a range of C-peptide values in people without diabetes, as compiled by Endocrine Sciences, Inc., a California-based laboratory that conducts the test. It should be noted that, in some cases, subjects fell below the normal range of C-peptide values, but were still not found to have diabetes. The range of values may also vary according to what lab your health care practitioner uses.
11 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2000
November 1999
Researchers from Italy and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) say they have found a link between a gene defect and insulin resistance, a condition that predisposes people to type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 1999
December 1998
A recent study revealed that insulin resistance is common in individuals with metabolic disorders.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1998
November 1997
In addition to adding greater convenience and flexibility to daily injection regimens, it now appears that lispro insulin is beneficial for those who experience insulin allergies and other similar reactions.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 1997
January 1993
Researchers from the Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Hospital, in Gøteborg, Sweden, have concluded that smoking causes insulin resistance.
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 1993