All for profit: Study reveals how a low-calorie diet can reverse Type 2 diabetes; researchers focus on how they can use the results to make new drugs

A research team at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut has discovered in a new study that was published in the journal Cell Metabolism about how a very low-calorie diet can instantly negate Type 2 diabetes in animal models, and with that aims to fashion new drugs to treat this common disease.

According to recent estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three Americans will likely be afflicted by Type 2 diabetes by 2050. The disease goes into remission when patients undergo bariatric weight-loss surgery, which works to limit caloric intake after clinically significant weight loss.

The Yale research team has endeavored to grasp the mechanisms by which a lower intake of calories can rapidly reverse Type 2 diabetes. This study is significant because it is a known fact that when the body is no longer able to produce enough insulin or suddenly becomes resistant to it, the body’s blood sugar levels increase and the body develops Type 2 diabetes.

The research team observed the effects of a very low-calorie diet (VLCD) – only at around one-quarter of the normal intake – on a mouse model that had Type 2 diabetes. Using a naturally occurring isotope approach, the researchers tracked metabolic processes that were one of the causes of the increased glucose production by the liver.

The method, which is called PINTA, made it possible for the researchers to do a complete set of analyses of key metabolic fluxes within the liver that could cause insulin resistance and increase rates of glucose production by the liver – two key processes that contribute to high blood sugar concentrations in diabetes. (Related: Type 2 diabetes myths and secrets explained: how I cured diabetes using food, not pharmaceuticals.)

VLCD was observed to lessen the conversion of lactate and amino acids into glucose; lessen the rate of liver glycogen conversion to glucose; and lessen fat content, which boosts the liver’s response to insulin. These positive effects were observed in just three days.

“Using this approach to comprehensively interrogate liver carbohydrate and fat metabolism, we showed that it is a combination of three mechanisms that are responsible for the rapid reversal of hyperglycemia following a very low-calorie diet,” said senior author Dr. Gerard Schulman, who had been named the George R. Cowgill Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Physiology and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

“These results, if confirmed in humans, will provide us with novel drug targets to more effectively treat patients with type-2 diabetes,” Schulman added.

This is yet another example of using medical research to promote drug dependence in the public. Nutrition has already been proven time and again to be effective in reducing symptoms of diabetes. Simple dietary changes can significantly impact your health for the better. A study that was conducted in 2015 showed that losing even a tiny amount, just a gram, of fat from the pancreas through a low-calorie diet can contribute to resetting insulin levels. This is as simple as it gets; no drugs, nothing unnatural, just good, clean, healthy lifestyle habits.

Sources include:

ScienceDaily.com

ScienceAlert.com

Mirror.co.uk