Medical News Online

A new study in animals demonstrates that a diet rich in coconut oil protects against ‘insulin resistance’ (an impaired ability of cells to respond to insulin) in muscle and fat. The diet also avoids the accumulation of body fat caused by other high fat diets of similar calorie content. Together these findings are important because obesity and insulin resistance are major factors leading to the development of Type 2 diabetes.

The study is also interesting because it helps explain human studies showing that people who incorporate medium chain ‘fatty acids’, such as those found in coconut oil, into their diets can lose body fat. Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers are saying juice extract from North American lowbush blueberries biotransformed with bacteria from the skin of the fruit may become the latest natural health resource for people who are obese or diabetic.

Canadian scientists tested the blueberry juice on mice prone to obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes and hypertension, and found that it reduced their food intake and, consequently, their body weight.

“These mice were an excellent model that closely resembles obesity and obesity-linked type 2 diabetes in humans,” senior author Dr. Pierre S. Haddad, a pharmacology professor at the Universite de Montreal Faculty of Medicine. Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers searching for a cure for obesity said on Thursday they have developed a drug that not only makes mice lose weight, but reverses diabetes and lowers their cholesterol, too.

The drug, which they have dubbed fatostatin, stops the body from making fat, instead releasing the energy from food. They hope it may lead to a pill that would fight obesity, diabetes and cholesterol, all at once.

Writing in the journal Chemistry and Biology, Salih Wakil of Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Motonari Uesugi of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues said the drug interferes with a suite of genes turned on by overeating. Read the rest of this entry »