From the Diabetes blog...
Less insulin longer life
Howard Hughs Medical Experts have discovered the key to a longer life is lower insulin levels. Less insulin helps cells fend off diseases that lead to early death like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. So how does one lower their insulin levels? Caloric restriction by way of eating less carbohydrates.
Caloric restriction postpones the onset of life-threatening conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. It may still happen, but at a later age. Scientists manipulated genes in mice to produce 50% less insulin and saw the mice live 18% longer. While lowering insulin throughout the body can lead to a diabetic state, scientists found that allowing insulin levels to be high throughout most of the body, and lowering the insulin signaling only in the brain through genetic manipulation, extended the life of mice.
Although the mice were overweight, they lived longer and seemed active and youthful. Scientists believe that this research explains why some people who live past 100 may have a natural genetic tendency for lower insulin signaling in the brain. They eat a normal amount of calories and may even be a bit overweight, but still enjoy the benefit of life extension. This begs the question: if all diabetes oral meds multiply the effect of insulin -- doesn't this increase the chances of heart disease and cancer? New Rule: Black box warning on ALL prescription diabetes drugs!!
Fascinating stuff. Basically insulin is bad. Very bad. Bad for your heart, brain, every cell in your body. Insulin also makes you fatter. Why do diabetics take insulin? So they can process carbohydrates. So wouldn't it be better to just not eat the carbohydrates in the first place. You'd think that, but doctors are convinced that carbohydrates are so fucking important, by god, if you have to destroy your body with insulin so you can eat potato chips and cookies, it's worth it. NO offense to type 1's who have a rougher road, but the lesson is clear- carbohydrates are poison, and by carbs I mean grains, bread and potatoes. Veggies and some fruit are okay.
Look at the following article, where doctors are so astonished that insulin causes this damage to longevity. Their solution? Is it to rethink the idea that we need carbs, and instead suggest a ketogenic diet? Of course not! It's to create some kind of medicine that makes the brain immune to the bad effects of carbs!
Reducing insulin signaling in brain helps prolong lifespan
LOS ANGELES, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Keep insulin levels low in the brain might help prolong lifespan, a new study shows.
Establishing the right balance in insulin signaling between the brain and the rest of the body is good for a long and healthy life, according to the study conducted by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston.
Insulin sends a vital signal throughout the body, telling cells to use sugar from the blood. But when cells become less sensitive to insulin, which often happens as people age and gain weight, the body must make more insulin to keep sugar under control and avoid type 2 diabetes.
For a long time, clinicians and scientists thought that "more insulin was a good thing," says Morris White, PhD, who led the new study.
"But the increased insulin also gets into the brain, where it can be detrimental."
Studies in worms and in fruit flies show that reducing insulin signaling lengthens lifespan. But in humans and rodents, reducing insulin signaling often causes diabetes. The view that insulin could reduce lifespan is difficult to reconcile with decades of clinical practice and scientific investigation to treat diabetes.
White suspected that the key to explaining this paradox -- and to maximizing both health and longevity -- is to reduce insulin signaling only in the brain.
To test this idea, White's team measured longevity and other characteristics in several groups of mice. In one group, they used a genetic trick to cut in half the amount of Irs2, a protein that carries the insulin signal inside the cell, in every cell of the body. Two other groups of mice were genetically engineered to have half, or nearly all, Irs2 removed only from the brain cells. Another group of normal mice served as controls.
"To our surprise, all of the engineered mice lived longer," says Akiko Taguchi, PhD, first author of the study. Even more surprising, the mice lacking Irs2 only in the brain lived almost half a year longer than the normal mice -- an 18 percent increase in lifespan -- despite being overweight and having higher blood insulin levels, changes that usually reduce lifespan.
These long-lived mice were more active in old age, retained youthful metabolic cycles (burning sugar by day and fat by night) and retained protective levels of anti-oxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase, which protect against oxidative stress, or "biological rusting," in the brain and body.
The mice with normal brain Irs2 levels aged less gracefully -- they lost the metabolic rhythms of youth, became more sedentary, and had reduced anti-oxidant enzymes after meals, leaving them vulnerable to cellular damage. Such damage correlates with a host of age-related diseases such as atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and cancer, notes White.
Less insulin longer life
Howard Hughs Medical Experts have discovered the key to a longer life is lower insulin levels. Less insulin helps cells fend off diseases that lead to early death like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. So how does one lower their insulin levels? Caloric restriction by way of eating less carbohydrates.
Caloric restriction postpones the onset of life-threatening conditions like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. It may still happen, but at a later age. Scientists manipulated genes in mice to produce 50% less insulin and saw the mice live 18% longer. While lowering insulin throughout the body can lead to a diabetic state, scientists found that allowing insulin levels to be high throughout most of the body, and lowering the insulin signaling only in the brain through genetic manipulation, extended the life of mice.
Although the mice were overweight, they lived longer and seemed active and youthful. Scientists believe that this research explains why some people who live past 100 may have a natural genetic tendency for lower insulin signaling in the brain. They eat a normal amount of calories and may even be a bit overweight, but still enjoy the benefit of life extension. This begs the question: if all diabetes oral meds multiply the effect of insulin -- doesn't this increase the chances of heart disease and cancer? New Rule: Black box warning on ALL prescription diabetes drugs!!
Fascinating stuff. Basically insulin is bad. Very bad. Bad for your heart, brain, every cell in your body. Insulin also makes you fatter. Why do diabetics take insulin? So they can process carbohydrates. So wouldn't it be better to just not eat the carbohydrates in the first place. You'd think that, but doctors are convinced that carbohydrates are so fucking important, by god, if you have to destroy your body with insulin so you can eat potato chips and cookies, it's worth it. NO offense to type 1's who have a rougher road, but the lesson is clear- carbohydrates are poison, and by carbs I mean grains, bread and potatoes. Veggies and some fruit are okay.
Look at the following article, where doctors are so astonished that insulin causes this damage to longevity. Their solution? Is it to rethink the idea that we need carbs, and instead suggest a ketogenic diet? Of course not! It's to create some kind of medicine that makes the brain immune to the bad effects of carbs!
Reducing insulin signaling in brain helps prolong lifespan
LOS ANGELES, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Keep insulin levels low in the brain might help prolong lifespan, a new study shows.
Establishing the right balance in insulin signaling between the brain and the rest of the body is good for a long and healthy life, according to the study conducted by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston.
Insulin sends a vital signal throughout the body, telling cells to use sugar from the blood. But when cells become less sensitive to insulin, which often happens as people age and gain weight, the body must make more insulin to keep sugar under control and avoid type 2 diabetes.
For a long time, clinicians and scientists thought that "more insulin was a good thing," says Morris White, PhD, who led the new study.
"But the increased insulin also gets into the brain, where it can be detrimental."
Studies in worms and in fruit flies show that reducing insulin signaling lengthens lifespan. But in humans and rodents, reducing insulin signaling often causes diabetes. The view that insulin could reduce lifespan is difficult to reconcile with decades of clinical practice and scientific investigation to treat diabetes.
White suspected that the key to explaining this paradox -- and to maximizing both health and longevity -- is to reduce insulin signaling only in the brain.
To test this idea, White's team measured longevity and other characteristics in several groups of mice. In one group, they used a genetic trick to cut in half the amount of Irs2, a protein that carries the insulin signal inside the cell, in every cell of the body. Two other groups of mice were genetically engineered to have half, or nearly all, Irs2 removed only from the brain cells. Another group of normal mice served as controls.
"To our surprise, all of the engineered mice lived longer," says Akiko Taguchi, PhD, first author of the study. Even more surprising, the mice lacking Irs2 only in the brain lived almost half a year longer than the normal mice -- an 18 percent increase in lifespan -- despite being overweight and having higher blood insulin levels, changes that usually reduce lifespan.
These long-lived mice were more active in old age, retained youthful metabolic cycles (burning sugar by day and fat by night) and retained protective levels of anti-oxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase, which protect against oxidative stress, or "biological rusting," in the brain and body.
The mice with normal brain Irs2 levels aged less gracefully -- they lost the metabolic rhythms of youth, became more sedentary, and had reduced anti-oxidant enzymes after meals, leaving them vulnerable to cellular damage. Such damage correlates with a host of age-related diseases such as atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and cancer, notes White.
Comments