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Insulin

I had no idea that insulin had anything to do with aging, I thought it was that every animal/insect and so forth had a finite number of heart beats? Has Mr. Attenborough led me down the wrong path, I'm on the verge of getting off my knees and picking up my shoes that I left so reverently at the altar entrance.
PS - please don't let this thread go down yet another carbohydrate bashing avenue
 
IIRC it's the speed of your heart beats that can also influence.Therefore anyone or animal with a slow heart beat lives longer,such as elephants,giant tortoises and some parrots.Things like little mice which have quick heart beats don't live to long.
 
Great
Premature aging, will add it to the list......


of reasons why I will continue to ignore the usual advice and manage my diabetes as best I can.
Better not tell OH though, he already thinks he's got a raw deal for old age without me looking like Gandalf the Grey by the time Im 65 (does anyone think long hair on a woman in her 60's is a problem?) :mrgreen:
 
I just posted this in an adjoining thread but it's worth repeating here

http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2009 ... ptide.html

when they body manufactures insulin it simultaneously produces c-peptide, which is not added to injected insulin.

For insulin resistant people obviously as they attempt to produce sufficient insulin to overcome the resistance they produce more c-peptide along with it. This research suggests there is a U-curve or maybe a J-curve to its levels much as with cholesterol
 
I'd agree with that, up to a point.
I'm not convinced that weight gain as a result of counteracting hypoglycemia is a strong argument. Type 2's for example may never experience a true hypo if they are not using insulin or sulphonylureas, yet they are far more predisposed to weight gain because of the consistently high insulin levels. Even insulin users, like me, may have relatively few hypos, which don't need an enormous number of calories to correct, yet gain weight if the insulin levels are consistently high. A few dextrose tablets in the course of a few weeks ain't gonna do it.

I'm more convinced by the argument that insulin derails the fat metabolism. If we eat 3 meals a day, and each meal takes say 4 hours to digest, then 12 hours out of 24 in a day are fueled by dietary calories, in theory at least. The other 12 must be fueled from stored reserves in the adipose tissue and elsewhere. If insulin levels are too high, however, these reserves are inaccesible and free fatty acids can't be used for fuel. The body then runs almost exclusively on glucose and the demand for glucose manifests itself as a hunger for starches and sugars. Cravings, snacks, indiscrete munchies of all kinds might account for a much greater calorie intake. The metabolism is then geared towards making fat, not burning it.

So I reckon that consistently high insulin levels fuel lipogenesis and the extra calories are feeding that fundamental hormonal imbalance.

fergus
 
This article (p 2-3) describes the dual role of insulin in inhibiting appetite and as a fat storage hormone. Its far too difficult to summarise since its already a summary
http://spectrum.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/reprint/20/3/166
One thing I found interesting was the mechanism which made my lipids sky high amd plasma opalescent when diagnosed.
'Without insulin to inhibit hormone-sensitive lipase, internal adipocyte triglyceride stores are hydrolyzed to fatty acids and glycerol and released into the circulation, causing the blood to
become lipemic and take on a cloudy appearance. In diabetic patients lacking insulin, body weight is reduced as triglyceride stores become depleted.'
 
Hmmm, possibly not a great idea for me, I've only recently got back UP to the weight I was when I left school in 1986! But I am making positive in-roads into reducing my overall carb intake, which I still think is a good thing to do, so consequently I need slightly less insulin...
 
Where it gets fiendishly complicated is with the issues of insulin level on leptin and other such recently discovered biochemistry. This is where there seems to be a lot of (genetic) individual variation.
 
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