According to a new study from the University of Montreal (Canada) and the Université de Yaoundé (Cameroun) cashew seed extract shows promise as an effective anti-diabetic, EurekAlet reports. Published in the journal Molecular Nutrition & Food Research, the investigation analyzed the reputed health benefits of cashew tree products on diabetes, notably whether cashew extracts could improve the body’s response to its own insulin.  The study found that cashew seed extract significantly stimulated blood sugar absorption...

The findings of a new study led by Esther Donga, MD of the Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands show a short night of sleep has more profound effects on metabolic regulation than previously appreciated.  ScienceDaily reports previous studies have found that reductions in sleep duration over multiple nights result in impaired glucose tolerance, but this is the first study to examine the effects of only a single night of partial sleep restriction on insulin sensitivity. In this study, researchers examined nine healthy...

Show Background Information I have read so many things about carbs! I am 32 – female – overweight and I suffer from insulin resistance. How am I supposed to eat? My Dr. took me off potatoes, rice, bread and pasta. Even the good carbs cause bloating, medicine head and general feelings of yucky-ness. But aren’t you supposed to eat carbs?

Believe it or not, our bodies were made to move.  We all need exercise. Dr. Bryan Bergman, Assistant Professor in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus, explains just how much exercise we need for cardiovascular health, increasing insulin sensitivity, and weight loss. ASL: How much, or should I say, how little should one exercise to see a benefit? BB: First of all, you need to decide what you want to accomplish. If your goal is cardiovascular disease prevention we have a lot of...

Insulin resistance, the hallmark of prediabetes, is compensated for by an increase in insulin output. Since the pancreas will eventually work itself to death it would behoove us to decrease the work load of this poor organ. A great deal of work has gone into understanding the factors that regulate insulin resistance and as it turns out; simply exercising regularly is sufficient to maintain a degree of insulin sensitivity. We understand many aspects of how exercise does this down to the molecular details and sometime I will describe...

Japan is one of the few countries that actually publishes the number of people who die suddenly on the job. Their name for it is karoshi: death by overwork. In the later stages of type 2 diabetes, the endocrine pancreas undergoes karoshi and the patient is sentenced to a life of insulin shots. How does this happen? Are there factors that predispose islet cells to die in this fashion? Yet another piece of this puzzle was discovered and recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The Indiana University...

Often diabetes is associated with the loss of insulin, however, long before the onset of type 2 diabetes the person at risk is suffering from a condition called “insulin resistance”. Insulin resistance is a big deal because it means that you are now “pre-diabetic” and are on the way to full blown diabetes. The consequences of insulin resistance are first; that your blood sugar is elevated leading to tissue damage and second; that your pancreas is working overtime to make more insulin and will eventually poop out. By the time...

We think of diabetes as a lack of insulin.  The strange thing, however, about the pre-diabetic state is that it is almost always associated with increased levels of insulin. Since insulin’s job is to get sugar out of the blood, the fact that there is an increased amount of insulin, but blood sugar levels remain higher than normal, means insulin is not succeeding in its job. This is what we mean by insulin resistance. Luckily for us, our insulin resistance (or if you like – our insulin sensitivity) can change. This is...

Unlike the more aggressive form of diabetes, Type 1, where the immune system actively searches out and kills islet cells, in Type 2, the cells die through a long process of overwork and poor waste management. Insulin, as you probably know, is the hormone that  plays the important role of getting fuel (glucose) into cells.  It’s also involved in the storage of glucose, and in getting glucose out of the bloodstream. This is important because glucose is reactive. Exposing tissues to high blood glucose is like exposing metal to...

After screening the DNA of more than 14,000 people, scientists have identified a gene linked to insulin resistance.  The study, published in “Nature Genetics,” reported the first genetic evidence that a defect in the way muscle cells respond to insulin can contribute to Type 2 diabetes. Read more in ScienceDaily.