Warning signs of diabetes can appear in very few days

Recently obtained statistics have revealed that almost 10% of the US population has diabetes. This alarming fact has forced researchers to carry out studies to find out how quickly one can start exhibiting different warning signs of type-2 diabetes.

A research team representing Philadelphia’s Temple University has found that an individual may develop debilitating signs that might eventually take the form of diabetes after consuming a high-calorie diet just for a few days. This finding is the outcome of a small study conducted to determine how the body of a healthy person reacts when he or she starts overeating.

During the study, researchers put 6 male participants on bed rest and fed them a 6,000 calorie high-carb diet daily. After that, they studied the reactions of the bodies of those male participants.

The researchers looked for a few particular markers for finding out how regular consumption of high-calorie diet was affecting various biological procedures taking place within the subjects’ bodies. They discovered that the individuals put on the 6000 calorie-diet eventually developed insulin resistance.

For those who don’t know: the term “insulin resistance” is used for a condition where insulin produced by an individual’s body doesn’t work the way it should, and the person’s pancreas needs to crank up production of insulin. Insulin resistance, in the long run, can take the form of type-2 diabetes and several other debilitating health disorders.

The majority of us know that the most prominent symptom of type-2 diabetes is high levels of blood sugar; this symptom is caused either due to lack of insulin or inefficient use of the hormone. Numbers put up by the National Institutes of Health suggest that the condition mostly strikes older adults or middle-aged individuals.

The researchers are conducting this new study also came to know that regular consumption of the high-calorie diet also had a strong impact on the cells of the subjects. This is because the mitochondria in their cells struggled to handle such high-calorie intake and started releasing potentially harmful chemicals. These chemicals eventually resulted in oxidative stress.

According to the researchers, mitochondria, which are basically energy engines of our body, become leaky after being flooded with calories. This compelled the mitochondria to release chemicals and trigger oxidative stress.

Tags