Sunday, July 26, 2009

Type 2 Diabetes and Fattys

In a recent article in Science the author does a wonderful job in providing an up to date review of just where the research is on Type 2 Diabetes and obesity.

The author concludes:

"One observation that seems indisputable is that when individuals lose weight, they become more insulin sensitive. If nothing else, this has given researchers the confidence to assume that excess body fat—particularly in the abdomen and around the internal organs— is a fundamental cause of insulin resistance. But that still avoids the question of what causes insulin resistance in lean individuals. This is something few researchers will even address, although one possibility is that they, too, simply can’t store fat safely in subcutaneous pads.

“The biggest question in the whole field of insulin resistance is still this direction of causality,” says O’Rahilly. “Does obesity make you insulin resistant? Or does underlying factor x cause both obesity and insulin resistance?”"

Yet the remaining fact is that Type 2 Diabetes is prevalent in obese people 100 to 1 more times in those not and the article does articulate the fact that fat is the primary cause of inflammation which in turn is a causative factor in the insulin collapse chain.