Diabetes or Weight — Which Comes First?

By David Spero "Everybody knows" that being fat leads to Type 2 diabetes, even though it's not true. That idea has been pretty well debunked. Reporting on a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Diane Fennell wrote "General measures of obesity, such as body-mass index, total body fat, or [fat under the skin] were not associated with an increased risk of developing Type 2." What seems more likely is that Type 2 diabetes makes people fat. The connection is insulin resistance. Nurse practitioner Laurie Klipfel writes, "Even thin people who are insulin resistant are at risk for the things associated with insulin resistance (hypertension, diabetes, [bad cholesterol], and obesity.)" Insulin resistance (IR) contributes to Type 2 and also makes people fat. Here's how IR makes people fat: Glucose can't get into insulin resistant muscle cells. Insulin resistant livers may refuse to store extra glucose. To compensate, the pancreas produces extra insulin, and these spikes in insulin lead to the formation of extra fat. Not all heavy people are insulin resistant, Klipfel says. "Obesity is not always associated with insulin resistance, and when it is not, [diabetes and hypertension] are usually not present either." A certain type of fat, though, really is associated with diabetes. This is visceral fat, fat around our internal organs, especially the liver and pancreas. This fat seems to interfere with insulin production in the pancreas and glucose storage in the liver....
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs