Obesity and Diabetes–The Missing Link?
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As some of you may recall from an earlier post here, inflammation appears to be a common link in the body between obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. There are substances in the body called pro-inflammatory cytokines that, as their name implies, promote the inflammatory process. This can be helpful when a foreign organism such as a bacterium or virus is the target; however, sometimes things go awry and these same cytokines may involve themselves in an assault on healthy tissue.
It appears that fat cells may be one of the primary culprits here. The thinking is that the more fat cells you accumulate, the greater your inflammatory cytokine level will be. Inflammatory cytokines in turn have been shown to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease (by promoting the development of plaque in the walls of the coronary arteries) as well as for diabetes. In the latter, it seems that they bind to insulin receptors on cells, blocking the action of insulin.
The result is that glucose remains in the blood instead of entering into the body’s cells, where it is needed as fuel. This may account for the development of type II diabetes, which is associated with obesity and improves with weight loss.
The exciting part of all of this is the implication that treatment with an anti-inflammatory drug might help prevent some of these complications of obesity. In fact, there’s an article that I came across that speaks to just that; you can find it here.
Barry Thompson MD, MA
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