Metabolic Medicine Science

Science

Diabetes and Insulin Resistance

3 Reasons It’s Harder For People With Type 2 Diabetes To Lose Weight - Dr Sarah Hallberg - Virta

"Approximately 90% of people with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese. While obesity often contributes to the development of diabetes, the bigger driver of weight gain is the high insulin levels that are found well before the diagnosis of diabetes.There are some good reasons why the standard advice of “eat less, exercise more” doesn’t deliver results for people living with type 2 diabetes.

Reason #1: With type 2 diabetes, insulin is high, and insulin is a fat-storage hormone"

[Read more about Diabetes and Insulin Resistance]

Diabetes is a vascular disease - Dr. Joseph R. Kraft, MD

"Dr. Kraft’s test is similar to the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), but it runs longer and includes insulin measurements. He confirmed and standardized the measurements using 14,384 subjects of all ages (a rather huge sampling). He identified one distinct normal insulin pattern (I) called “euinsulinemia” and three abnormal patterns (II-III-IV) of hyperinsulinemia, also called diabetes “in-situ”. Pattern (V), consistent with low insulin, type I diabetes and loss of beta cell function was also identified but is not discussed here. Diabetes in-situ identifies diabetes at its earliest stage, illustrating how hyperinsulinemia manifests itself before hyperglycemia. Insulin resistance, a more common term used today, can be used interchangeably as both describe a similar metabolic defect."

Heart Disease and Insulin Resistance

It's the Insulin Resistance, Stupid - Prof. Timothy Noakes

"When medical scientists propagate a false hypothesis, two things happen, and both of them are bad.

First, the wrong idea causes direct harm to those who adopt practices based on that incorrect hypothesis. Second, the wrong idea suppresses any attempts to discover the correct hypothesis. Such suppression occurs as a result of (enforced) scientific consensus." [ Read more about Insulin resistance and heart disease]

Read Part 2 of this series

Read Part 3 of this series.

Read Part 4 of this series.

Understanding the Total Risk ‘Forest’ Rather than Focusing on the ‘LDL Tree’- Dr Stephen Phinney (and others) - Virta.

"For the last 5 decades, most medical and nutrition scientists have focused on low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol as a primary cause of coronary heart disease. Characterized as ‘bad cholesterol,’ literally thousands of studies have been done using drugs or diet to reduce LDL cholesterol and thereby hoping to reduce heart attacks and mortality. While cholesterol lowering therapy has become the standard of care for some individuals with well-defined heart disease risk, this focus on cholesterol in general—and LDL cholesterol in particular—remains very controversial."

[Read more about Ketogenic Diets and Blood Lipid change]

Dementia and Insulin Resistance

In Alzheimer Research, Glucose Metabolism Moves to Center Stage - Bridget Kuehn - JAMA

"Areas or patterns of reduced glucose metabolism are often seen in brain scans of patients with Alzheimer disease and other dementias. Now, a growing body of evidence suggests that glucose hypometabolism may be more than just a biomarker on brain scans: it may be a key player in dementia pathology."

[Read more about how metabolic disease affects dementia]

Reversal of Cognitive Decline - Dr. Dale Bredesen - Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinsonism

"The first examples of reversal of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease and the pre-Alzheimer’s disease conditions MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment) and SCI (Subjective Cognitive Impairment) have recently been published. These two publications described a total of 19 patients showing sustained subjective and objective improvement in cognition, using a comprehensive, precision medicine approach that involves determining the potential contributors to the cognitive decline (e.g., activation of the innate immune system by pathogens or intestinal permeability, reduction in trophic or hormonal support, specific toxin exposure, or other contributors), using a computer-based algorithm to determine subtype and then addressing each contributor using a personalized, targeted, multi-factorial approach dubbed ReCODE for reversal of cognitive decline.

[Read More about how Metabolic Medicine positively affects Dementia]

More Science

Dr. David Ludwig - Ludwig is a professor at Harvard Medical School[1] and a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. Effects of low carb diet on energy expenditure during weight loss. BMJ 2018;363:k4583.

This study's findings are consistent with the carbohydrate-insulin model that lowering dietary carbohydrate increased energy expenditure ( metabolic rate) during weight loss maintenance. This study had 16 participants over a 20 week period and this metabolic effect may improve the success of obesity treatment, especially among those with high insulin secretion.

This is a great article reviewing many books and science published on the subject of Ketogenic Diets that also offers assistance navigating the overwhelming subject matter.