New Treatment Stops Type II Diabetes 253
multicsfan writes Researchers have found that an injection of protein FGF1 stops weight induced diabetes in mice, with no apparent side effects. However, the cure only lasts 2 days at a time. Future research and human trials are needed to better understand and create a working drug. From the story: "The team found that sustained treatment with the protein doesn't merely keep blood sugar under control, but also reverses insulin insensitivity, the underlying physiological cause of diabetes. Equally exciting, the newly developed treatment doesn't result in side effects common to most current diabetes treatments."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Tobacco smoke boosts FGF1 by 50% (Score:3, Interesting)
As always when a new miracle medicine is hailed in the media, I check the effects of the ancient medicinal plant, tobacco on the same biochemical mechanisms, and it didn't disappoint this time either -- as shown in this paper [wiley.com] (pdf), it boosts the same Fibroblast Growth Factor-1 by 50% (nicotine will do as well in this case).
Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Surprisingly, I also have very low blood cholesterol levels -- many physically fit people with healthy eating habits have several times higher levels.
Yeah; your cholesterol levels are controlled by your liver. GGP comes off to me as being a dietary fanatic, the likes of which I've seen all too often, and they're kind of annoying because they play armchair general about what everybody shall and shall not eat, meanwhile their knowledge of biology and chemistry tends to be really bad, just like GGP's appears to be (or at least, a very VERY bad understanding of what diabetes is.) I remember one dietary fanatic telling me how his cholesterol was high, so he decided to become a vegetarian. I don't know whether or not he solved that problem, but if he did the vegetarian diet had very little to do with it, but he's just going on being smug anyways. (In fact the Harvard Study vegetarians frequently cite about read meat being "bad" doesn't actually suggest this, instead it shows a link between people with uncontrolled diets and various diseases...but interestingly it also suggests a link between vegetarian diets and high cholesterol, which they never acknowledge.)
In fact, in recent years we've found that dietary cholesterol has very little impact on blood cholesterol, and may even have no impact at all. What we have found to influence it is saturated fats; less of them will reduce your blood cholesterol. More unsaturated fats will also reduce it (i.e. omega-3.) Exercise also effects it. However dietary changes and exercise have been only found to reduce blood cholesterol by about 30% in the best case scenarios. Beyond that, statin therapy is very effective. People who claim to be "naturalists" (ironically none of them can seem to even agree what the word "natural" means) often tell me how I shouldn't be taking these pills, but I take lovastatin and as a result my cholesterol levels are well within normal range whereas before that and my triglycerides were really high (typically tryglicerides are high when you take in too many calories, which given I am losing weight rather quickly rather quickly, that simply can't be the case; the liver doing something it isn't supposed to be doing however would explain it perfectly.) No side effects either.
GGP types also tend to be those anti-GMO, pro organic extremists, which are even more annoying because at the end of the day there is zero conclusive evidence against GMO, and zero evidence that suggests organic is in any way better than anything else (but it certainly costs more!)
Anywho, being overweight in general isn't a good thing, but if you don't have hypertension and some of the other issues that go along with it, you aren't really in danger of anything bad happening any time soon. The main reason I had to lose weight was due to reduced renal function, which was caused by another unrelated problem related to the immune system (specifically, IGAn, which nobody has ever been able to identify the cause of, and it isn't any more prevalent in overweight people than anybody else.) However reduced weight means reduced body mass, which means reduced need for filtration.
Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 (Score:4, Interesting)
No, that's not the problem. Only a half-wit conspiracy theorist dumbass would think they aren't trying to find a cure. The fact that they got here alone speaks volumes about just how badly they want one. What they've discovered is groundbreaking. They didn't choose for diabetes to exist. They also didn't choose for this treatment to only last two days, rather that's just an unfortunate downside of it. If you think it's so damned easy to find a cure, go publish your own damn paper.
Not everybody is involved in a conspiracy to deprive you of your wallet. The fact that you see it that way is entirely your choice to do so, and is probably the reason you feel like shit every day and think everybody is out to make your life suck. If you really hate civilization that bad, go live in a tree, shit in the woods, get a tropical disease, and see just how much better life is without all of the evil drug companies ruining it for you.
Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably not. Both me and my ex are Type 2. I can't afford to get even 20 lbs. over weight (I'm 6'1", For me, I should weigh at least 180 - that's show off the six pack range, but even with measured bodyfat at less than, say, 14%, I still have to use some oral meds if I get only 20 lbs. over what looks to be about ideal). For her, at only 5' 6", she could probably get above 220 before she would need to use insulin or see progress in retinopathy - she has some initial traces, but the progression has been totally stalled for nearly 10 years now. However, she has to stay below 180 lbs. or she has peripheral neuropathy symptoms (that's in the feet, where it usually starts. Under 165, she stops having those symptoms, plus even needing Metformin, and so she's trying to stay there. She has about the usual cushion for Type 2, I have almost none at all. For typical Type 2's, managing the disease well enough to beat neuropathy is also plenty to beat retinopathy. For atypical ones such as myself, who knows, but what AbRASION wrote is generally good advice.
However, it's generally tougher than what he (?) wrote - more like 30 minutes + of just plain running 3x a week, PLUS some weights and wierd stuff like climbing walls, standing jumps for elevation and such, so the gym sessions usually go to a full hour, and weekend hiking, swimming, cross-training if either of us gains even five pounds, and often if not. We both run in 10 K's not just 5's,,and have managed a half marathon in the last 2 years. She leg presses 550 lbs to my 440, I'm benching 265 to her 110. If that's light exercise to someone, their dad's name was Jor El.
Quadrupliing your complex carbs? Well double them at least, and cut the simpler starches nearly as much as the sugars. "Vastly reduce your sugar intake" is also accurate, as in NO HFCS, NO sweetened soft drinks, Stevia is a lifesaver, a cookie? - is it my birthday? We had to memorize, and check for changes frequently, which peanut butters or canned soups have how much added sugar - there's added sugar or HFCS in a whole lot of products that people don't usually expect. Who would think that some brands of Smoked Ham lunchmeat have more added sugar than the same brand's Honey Ham version? Working out as we do, we can manage twice a week soft drinks made from fruit juice and soda water, no added sweeteners, and a small dessert at sunday family dinners (a third of the pie slice or cake slice everyone else cuts), but I, at least, have to know which fruits are high in Fructose and which have more of the other sugars mixed in to even do that, and I skip that dessert completely more often than not.
We've been on this sort of regimen for over 8 years for her and 11 for me. I'm not going to jump at a potential cure, because I'm managing, and I doubt she will want to volunteer for early tests either, but if this leads to a real cure, we can stick to what we do, and in another five years, most of you will be welcoming me and her as your new overlords. I'm expeding effort like what I used to do in my 30's to score 380 on the Army's extended scale APFT, just to stay in pretty good shape for a guy in his 50's. Take away this disease and that effort will again make me a veritable titan, and all Slashdot will tremble at my name. Bwaa-ha-ha-ha! Excuse me, I meant to say I find this prosepective cure moderately interesting.
Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 (Score:3, Interesting)
What I meant was, you can train yourself to like healthy foods, to the point of craving them. Me, just eating one small burger from McDonald's makes me sick now.
As for exercising, it make you feel good. It really does. It's a real buzz after an mere half hour of cycling or swimming.
And then, in the grand scheme of things, when your health is good, you generally feel good too.
Staying healthy makes you feel good, but it does so in the medium to long run, and it takes a bit of effort to get going. Chocolate provides immediate, short-term and effortless pleasure. But it's not good for you. Don't you think it's worth investing a little effort for a few months to train yourself to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, so that you can feel good all the time afterward?
Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh so wrong. Healthy food is also fabulously tasty. Too bad most people have no idea what food actually is healthy and which ain't so much.
Through my college years of pizza, pasta, candy, couscous, cereal muesli and homemade fruit juices I ended up obese and prediabetic in 2007. I lost the extra weight and reversed the diabetic symptoms (fasting glycemia and Hb1ac back to normal) on zero exercise and a diet of roasted fatty duck filets (with the skin braised crispy), salmon sashimi, lamb/veal casserole, chicken massala and lots of greens bathing in molten butter.
There is a big personal investment required though: you must learn to cook.
Re:wall-e (Score:5, Interesting)
To quote the infamous Dr. Terwilliger, [wikipedia.org] "I, on the other hand, am inclined to doubt that statement." The most brilliant man I ever knew, Dan Alderson [wikipedia.org] was diabetic and didn't take care of himself. Two years before he was forced to retire for medical reasons, he lost his eyesight to diabetic neuropathy; he was only able to continue because I became his "seeing eye person" and helped him continue to program by dictation. Next, it caused his kidneys to fail so that he had to go on dialysis, forcing him to retire. About a year later, he lost a foot to an ulcer, largely caused by his diabetes. Within a year he was dead. Another friend was concerned about his blood sugar levels and made an appointment to have it checked; before the appointment came, he died of hyperglycemia. I developed Type II twelve years ago and since then have woken up in four different ERs. Diabetes can be, and often is a deadly metabolic disorder. Please learn what you're talking about before you comment on this subject again.
Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called eating well, exercising and losing a significant amount of weight.
I know, I came very very close to having it. Break the sugar addiction, quadruple your vegetable intake, vastly reduce your sugar / heavy foods intake and do a little, tiny bit of basic light exercise.
In a couple of years, guess what,...?
Watch this: https://www.ted.com/talks/pete... [ted.com]
Get some compassion.
Re:wall-e (Score:4, Interesting)
is caused by a combination of lifestyle and genetic factors
That's the key right there - in the majority of cases, you need the combination.
As many have posted, some people are huge fatties with low cholesterol and well controlled blood sugar. This concurs with the above - they are lucky enough not to have the genetic components.
Type II diabetes is of low incidence in India, but of high incidence in those of Indian-Asian ethnicity living in Western cultures. What's the difference? In India, people eat differently and exercise more. Despite their increased genetic predilection to Type II diabetes, they don't get it from their genetics alone.
The assertion that it has one root cause is false - the human metabolism is a complex system with many factors. The fact that you can't control many of these factors seems to be a vast comfort to some folk, as if it somehow absolves them of responsibility - but it remains true that you DO have control over factors that by themselves can prevent you getting the disease.