Type 2s Stomachs Empty Too Quickly

One reason people with type 2 diabetes have difficulty controlling their blood glucose levels may be because their stomachs empty too fast.

Research appearing in the May 1996 Diabetes Care found after a high carbohydrate meal the stomachs of people with type 2 diabetes empty faster than those of people without diabetes.

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center studied the stomach emptying rate of eight patients with type 2 diabetes and eight control patients after eating pancakes. The type 2 subjects’ stomachs emptied on average almost twenty minutes faster than the control subjects’.

Rapid emptying of the stomach resulted in a steep rise of plasma glucose in the type 2 subjects and in general, according to the researchers, an instability of blood glucose control.

The researchers speculated that using drugs to slow the rate at which the stomach empties may be a future method of controlling type 2 diabetes.