[Press release] Unexpected turn in diabetes research suggests reinterpretation of years of research — ScienceDaily

Unexpected turn in diabetes research suggests reinterpretation of years of research — ScienceDaily.

Excerpts from the press release

Date:January 20, 2015

Source:KU Leuven

Summary:Years of diabetes research carried out on mice whose DNA had been altered with a human growth hormone gene is now ripe for reinterpretation after a new study confirms that the gene had an unintended effect on the mice’s insulin production, a key variable in diabetes research.

Years of diabetes research carried out on mice whose DNA had been altered with a human growth hormone gene is now ripe for reinterpretation after a new study by researchers at KU Leuven confirms that the gene had an unintended effect on the mice’s insulin production, a key variable in diabetes research.

Genetically modified mice have been used in medical research for over thirty years. To expedite the cutting-and-pasting of fragments of DNA, the pioneers of the method inserted a human growth hormone gene alongside other modified DNA. Researchers assumed that the DNA of the human growth hormone would remain tightly encapsulated in the modified DNA of the mouse.

They did not expect the mice to begin producing their own human growth hormone — but that appears to be exactly what happened.

KU Leuven professors Frans Schuit and John Creemers used the genetically modified mice regularly in their lab. To their surprise, they observed that the mice showed pregnancy-like symptoms despite not being pregnant at all.

Digging deeper, the researchers discovered that this pregnancy-like state was being caused by the human growth hormone, explains Professor Schuit: “In mice, the human growth hormone has the same effect as hormones that are produced by the placenta in pregnant mice. Just as in pregnancy, the cells in the pancreas that are responsible for the production of insulin change. They increase in number and begin to produce more insulin. And that happens to be exactly what we study in diabetes research.”

…

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Recipes for folks with diabetes which are also good for us all!

Folks with diabetes are advised to plan ahead and ..

• Limiting foods that are high in sugar
• Eat smaller portions, spread out over the day
• Be careful about when and how many carbohydrates you eat
• Eat a variety of whole-grain foods, fruits and vegetables every day
• Eat less fat
• Limit  use of alcohol
• Use less salt

Sensible advice for just about everybody.
Also, a healthy diet and a health diet can prevent diabetes from developing.

Here’s a few good resources for planning healthy meals and healthy eating in general

• Diabetes – Meal Planning(Patient Education Institute)  Also available in Spanish 

 

• Tasty Recipes for People with Diabetes and Their Families(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) – PDF  Also available in Spanish 

 

• MyFoodAdvisor(American Diabetes Association)
• Keep the Beat: Heart Healthy Recipes from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Related articles

• A healthy diet for diabetics includes foods that can be enjoyed
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[News article] When Your Body Needs Calories, You Are More Inclined to Help the Poor

From the 12 November 2013 ScienceDaily article

 Imagine that you have not eaten anything for the past few hours. It is almost lunch time, and you are getting hungry. You receive an email. It is a survey asking about your political position regarding the welfare state. You answer the questions quickly and head off to lunch. Now imagine a different scenario. You have just come back from lunch. You are feeling full, as you sit down in front of your computer. You receive the same email. You answer the survey quickly and then get back to work. Do you think your answers in these two scenarios would be the same — or different?

…

Read the entire article here

Related articles

• Why Philanthropy Needs Reinventing(HuffPost Impact) 

• Learning from the 50 Worst Charities (lstarkblog.wordpress.com)

Americans donate over $300 billion annually to nonprofits, averaging about $1,000 per person. We feel good when we give to our favorite charities. At the same time, philanthropy is broken, and almost everyone knows it.

The causes that receive the most donations are not typically the ones that make the greatest impact. Instead, the personal whims and preferences of donors determine where dollars flow. People pick charities based more on reputation and trust than proven effectiveness. Many donors do not know how to define a “high performing” nonprofit, let alone how to identify one or assess whether there are more worthy charities. Donors respond to inspirational anecdotes in professionally-written fundraising material rather than asking for meaningful evidence of performance; simultaneously, they express concerns about high overhead costs and program effectiveness. Philanthropy is broken, and it needs to be reinvented.

But how? There are three key areas that can create a domino effect of improving charitable giving.

1. There must be greater honesty about charitable giving.

Read the entire article here

• You Are More Inclined to Help the Poor, When You Need Calories (understandcancerin60minutes.wordpress.com)

• When your body needs calories, you’re more inclined to help the poor (scienceblog.com)
• When your body needs calories, you are more inclined to help the poor (eurekalert.org)
• When your body needs calories, you are more inclined to help the poor (chimac.net)
• Hunger Makes Humans More Charitable (counselheal.com)
• Learning from the 50 Worst Charities (lstarkblog.wordpress.com)

 

Coffee- some cons

While I am a coffee lover, presently the indulgence is only 2 cups a day.

Came across 2 items recently that have reinforced why I limit my intake.
In my humble opinion, it really is scientifically challenging to say if coffee is good or bad  because there are so many chemicals in coffee, each with associated side effects…

The items…

10 Reasons to Quit Your Coffee! (by Mark Hyman, MD at HuffPost Healthy Living, 7/1/12)
 (via Amy Croan, MPH who I follow on Twitter. She authors the blog To Your Health..).

Excerpts

While there are many controversies about coffee’s role in the prevention of Parkinson’s disease to breast cancer, I’m mostly interested in the conversation relating to its effect on blood sugar metabolism. If you have read my latest book, The Blood Sugar Solution, then you already know how insulin resistance and inflammation are at the core of modern-day chronic diseases….

Here are 10 reasons why:

1. The caffeine in coffee increases catecholamines, your stress hormones. The stress response elicits cortisol and increases insulin. Insulin increases inflammation, and this makes you feel lousy.
2. Habituation to caffeine decreases insulin sensitivity, making it difficult for your cells to respond appropriately to blood sugar. High blood sugar levels lead to arterial deterioration and increased risk of mortality related to cardiovascular disease.
3. Unfiltered coffee has the highest amount of beneficial antioxidants yet also leaks the most diterpenes into your system. These diterpenes have been linked to higher levels of triglycerides, LDL and VLDL levels.
4. The helpful chlorogenic acids that may delay glucose absorption in the intestine have also been shown to increase homocysteine levels — an indicator for increased risk of cardiovascular disease, which tends to be elevated in diabesity.
5. The acidity of coffee is associated with digestive discomfort, indigestion, heart burn, GERD and dysbiosis (imbalances in your gut flora).
6. Addiction is often an issue with coffee drinkers and makes it really difficult to rely on the body’s natural source of energy. Ask any coffee drinker about how it feels to withdraw from coffee, and you will mistake their story for that of a drug addict’s…
7. Associative addictions trend with coffee — who doesn’t immediately think of warm, frothy sweet cream and sugar when they picture coffee? Surely the business of coffee has inspired a culture addicted to the sugary, fatty tastes of what has become more of a meal than a drink! That morning latte is the epitome of food lacking nutrition density yet packing energy!
8. 5-HIA, an organic acid and component of the neurotransmitter serotonin (the happy chemical) seen in the urine tends to be elevated in coffee drinkers, which means they may be at risk for lower levels of serotonin synthesis in the brain. Serotonin is necessary for normal sleep, bowel function, mood, and energy levels. It is a vicious cycle, as caffeine can disrupt sleep and promote anxiety and depression. We all know someone who tends to be tired, wired and over-caffeinated!
9. Elevated urinary excretion of important minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium have been noted in coffee drinkers. An imbalance in your electrolyte status can lead to serious systemic complications.Constituents in coffee can interfere with normal drug metabolism and detoxification in the liver, making it difficult to regulate the normal detoxification process in the liver.
10.  Another issue to be aware of with coffee intake is how certain medications such as levothyroxine (thyroid) as well as tricyclic antidepressants are poorly absorbed, making symptoms curiously worse for patients.

As long as news keeps cranking coffee benefit stories, we’ll keep commenting on them (HealthNewsReview.org*** 7/2/2012)

Excerpts

CAFFEINE LINKED TO LOWER SKIN CANCER RISK – ABC NEWS

CAFFEINE IN COFFEE MAY HELP LOWER RISK OF SKIN CANCER – Fox News

Addendum on July 4: 

Good news, java junkies: Researchers have found the more coffee you drink, the more you may be protecting yourself against skin cancer. – CNN.com

None of these stories mentioned anything about:

• this was an observational study
• it showed a statistical association – not cause-and-effect

And the Fox and CNN stories didn’t have any independent perspective – only the researcher/author touting the study’s importance.

But the sun shines on HealthDay today because it included this simple and effective reminder:

“While the study uncovered an association between greater caffeine consumption and reduced risk of basal cell cancer, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.”

As always, we remind journalists and news consumers of our primer: Does The Language Fit The Evidence? – Association Versus Causation

Here are just some of our past blog posts about news coverage of supposed health benefits of coffee:

• Coffee clichés and the tired old trend on observational study stories

• Another coffee observational study – another round of misplaced emphasis

• Story whips up confusion over coffee and breast cancer risk – hurts more than helps

• Coffee & prostate cancer: Some news reports got it right. Others….

• Coffee & stroke: what the study didn’t prove and what some stories got wrong

• Another day, another slew of misleading media messages on observational study

• CBS is wrong on coffee “lowering risk” of uterine cancer

• Silly, unsupported headlines on coffee-tea & MRSA

• Prevention Magazine: we said we’d be watching you and we are!

• Wisdom of the crowds: news consumers tired of misinterpreted observational studies

**HealthNewsReview.org provides independent reviews of health stories which are based on high journalism standards of accuracy, completeness and balance. (See their toolkit for tips on how to understand studies, evaluate claims, analyze news coverage, and more)

English: A photo of a cup of coffee. Esperanto: Taso de kafo. Français : Photo d’une tasse de caffé Español: Taza de café (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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