(Press-News.org) BOSTON – September 17, 2014 – Why are Asian Americans at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than Caucasian Americans, and prone to develop the disease at lower body weights? One part of this puzzle may lie in the transition from traditional high-fiber, low-fat Asian diets to current westernized diets, which may pose extra risks for those of Asian heritage, says George King, M.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Joslin Diabetes Center and the senior author of the study.
A Joslin randomized clinical trial now has demonstrated that both Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans at risk of type 2 diabetes who adopted a rigorously controlled traditional Asian diet lowered their insulin resistance. (A leading risk factor for developing the disease, insulin resistance is a condition in which the body struggles to use the hormone insulin, which helps to metabolize sugar.)
Moreover, when both groups of participants then switched to consuming typical western fare, the Asian Americans experienced greater increases in insulin resistance than did the Caucasian Americans, says Dr. King, senior author on a paper on the study published in the journal PLOS One.
The 16-week pilot trial was completed by 24 East Asian Americans and 16 Caucasian Americans, who had an average age of 34 and were either of normal weight or overweight but not obese. All the volunteers had a family history of type 2 diabetes or another indication of diabetes risk such as gestational diabetes.
For the first eight weeks, all the participants ate a traditional high-fiber East Asian diet with 70% of calories from carbohydrates, 15% from protein and 15% from fat, and providing 15 g fiber/1,000 kcal. The food was prepared fresh by local chefs and delivered every two days. "Three meals and one snack were included each day, and we made sure that they were nutritious as well as very tasty," says Ka Hei Karen Lau, a Joslin dietitian and certified diabetes educator.
For the second eight weeks, 33 of the volunteers (20 Asian Americans and 13 Caucasian Americans) transitioned to a typical low-fiber western diet with 50% of calories from carbohydrates, 16% from protein and 34% from fat, and providing 6 g fiber/1,000 kcal. Seven volunteers (4 Asian Americans and 3 Caucasian Americans) stayed on the traditional Asian diet to act as controls for the study.
Meeting with the trial participants every two weeks, the Joslin team adjusted individual diets as needed to keep their weights relatively steady, so that changes in their metabolism were not driven primarily by changes in weight.
Maintaining those steady body weights for trial participants was a challenge, King remarks. "It was almost impossible to prevent people from losing weight on the Asian diet, and that was not because the food wasn't good!" he says. "And almost everybody gained weight on the western diet, and we had to work very hard so they didn't gain too much."
The researchers suggested that the combination of high fiber and low fat in the traditional diet may help to explain the decrease in insulin resistance, especially for the Asian American participants.
Additionally, those on the traditional Asian diet lowered their LDL cholesterol, a potential benefit for cardiovascular health.
"These results were very exciting for Asian Americans," Lau says. "We are at high risk for diabetes, but we can use diet to help prevent it."
Joslin's Asian Clinic now promotes a traditional Asian diet and shares suitable recipes with patients.
The researchers hope to follow up the pilot trial with a larger trial that compares results of a traditional Asian diet with a westernized Asian diet and does not try to control participant weight.
Asian Americans have about 20% higher risks of developing type 2 diabetes than Caucasian Americans. More than half of the adults in the world with the disease live in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, the researchers pointed out, and about 10% of adults in China now suffer from diabetes.
A book written by Dr. King, Diabetes Reset, will be publishing in early 2015. In the book, it talks more about the traditional Asian diet, and eight steps to prevent and control diabetes.
INFORMATION:
William Hsu, MD, director of Joslin's Asian Clinic, was lead author on the paper. Other contributors included Dalia Moghazy and Hillary Keenan of Joslin, and Motonobu Matsumoto of Sunstar, Inc. Lead funder was the Joslin Asian American Diabetes Initiative, with Sunstar providing additional support.
About Joslin Diabetes Center
Joslin Diabetes Center, based in Boston, Massachusetts, undertakes diabetes research, clinical care, education and health and wellness programs on a global scale. Joslin is dedicated to ensuring that people with diabetes live long, healthy lives and offers real progress in preventing and curing diabetes. Joslin is an independent, nonprofit institution affiliated with Harvard Medical School, and is recognized worldwide for driving innovative solutions in diabetes prevention, research, education, and care.
Our mission is to prevent, treat and cure diabetes. Our vision is a world free of diabetes and its complications. For more information, visit http://www.joslin.org.
About Joslin Research
Joslin Research comprises the most comprehensive and productive effort in diabetes research under one roof anywhere in the world. With 30‐plus faculty‐level investigators, Joslin researchers focus on unraveling the biological, biochemical and genetic processes that underlie the development of type 1 and type 2 diabetes and related complications.
Joslin research is highly innovative and imaginative, employing the newest tools in genetics, genomics and proteomics to identify abnormalities that may play a role in the development of diabetes and its complications. Joslin Clinic patients, and others with diabetes, have the option of participating in clinical trials at Joslin to help translate basic research into treatment innovations.
Joslin has one of the largest diabetes training programs in the world, educating 150 M.D. and Ph.D. researchers each year, many of whom go on to head diabetes initiatives at leading institutions all over the globe. For more information, visit http://www.joslinresearch.org.
In Joslin trial, Asian Americans lower insulin resistance on traditional diet
2014-09-17
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Fighting parents hurt children's ability to recognize and regulate emotions
2014-09-17
Exposure to verbal and physical aggression between parents may hurt a child's ability to identify and control emotions, according to a longitudinal study led by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
The findings, which appear in the journal Development and Psychopathology, also suggest that household chaos and prolonged periods of poverty during early childhood may take a substantial toll on the emotional adjustment of young children.
"Our study points to ways in which aggression between parents may powerfully shape children's emotional ...
Persian Gulf states have new role to play in Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution
2014-09-17
HOUSTON – (Sept. 17, 2014) – The shifting regional geopolitics of the Middle East have created new opportunities for the Persian Gulf states to engage in Arab-Israeli conflict resolution, according to a new paper from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
"The Gulf States and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution," authored by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, proposes a set of policy recommendations on how the Gulf states can engage with regional and international partners to create new pathways for action and cooperation. Ulrichsen is the fellow for the Middle ...
Why bioethics literacy matters
2014-09-17
From accessible and affordable health care to reproductive technologies, the justice and well-being of our society depend on the ability of people to identify key issues, articulate their values and concerns, deliberate openly and respectfully, and find the most defensible ways forward. But what are the best educational practices to support these societal conversations?
The Hastings Center and the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues have teamed up to publish a series of essays to highlight the best practices in teaching bioethics and to identify ...
Smallest known galaxy with a supermassive black hole
2014-09-17
SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 17, 2014 – A University of Utah astronomer and his colleagues discovered that an ultracompact dwarf galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object. The finding suggests huge black holes may be more common than previously believed.
"It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Anil Seth, lead author of an international study of the dwarf galaxy published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black ...
Gut bacteria, artificial sweeteners and glucose intolerance
2014-09-17
Artificial sweeteners, promoted as aids to weight loss and diabetes prevention, could actually hasten the development of glucose intolerance and metabolic disease; and they do it in a surprising way: by changing the composition and function of the gut microbiota – the substantial population of bacteria residing in our intestines. These findings, the results of experiments in mice and humans, were published today in Nature. Among other things, says Dr. Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute's Immunology Department, who led this research together with Prof. Eran Segal of Computer ...
New branch added to European family tree
2014-09-17
The setting: Europe, about 7,500 years ago.
Agriculture was sweeping in from the Near East, bringing early farmers into contact with hunter-gatherers who had already been living in Europe for tens of thousands of years.
Genetic and archaeological research in the last 10 years has revealed that almost all present-day Europeans descend from the mixing of these two ancient populations. But it turns out that's not the full story.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Tübingen in Germany have now documented a genetic contribution from a third ancestor: ...
Natural born killers: Chimpanzee violence is an evolutionary strategy
2014-09-17
ANN ARBOR—Man's nearest relatives kill each other in order to eliminate rivals and gain better access to territory, mates, food or other resources—not because human activities have made them more aggressive.
That is the conclusion of an international analysis of lethal aggression among different groups of chimpanzees in Africa studied over five decades. The research appears in the current issue of Nature.
"Observations that chimpanzees kill members of their own species have influenced efforts to understand the evolution of human violence," said University of Michigan ...
What set the Earth's plates in motion?
2014-09-17
The mystery of what kick-started the motion of our earth's massive tectonic plates across its surface has been explained by researchers at the University of Sydney.
"Earth is the only planet in our solar system where the process of plate tectonics occurs," said Professor Patrice Rey, from the University of Sydney's School of Geosciences.
"The geological record suggests that until three billion years ago the earth's crust was immobile so what sparked this unique phenomenon has fascinated geoscientists for decades. We suggest it was triggered by the spreading of early ...
Nature of war: Chimpanzees inherently violent according to study
2014-09-17
(Chicago) -- Of all of the world's species, humans and chimpanzees are some of the only to engage in coordinated attacks on other members of their same species. Jane Goodall was among the first to introduce the occurrence of lethal inter-community killings and since then primatologists and anthropologists have long debated the concept of warfare in this genus. Research theories have pointed to increased gains and benefits of killing off competitors and opening up increased access to key resources such as food or mates. In contrast, others have argued that warfare is a result ...
Modern Europeans descended from three groups of ancestors
2014-09-17
New studies of ancient DNA are shifting scientists' ideas of how groups of people migrated across the globe and interacted with one another thousands of years ago. By comparing nine ancient genomes to those of modern humans, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have shown that previously unrecognized groups contributed to the genetic mix now present in most modern-day Europeans.
"There are at least three major, highly differentiated populations that have contributed substantial amounts of ancestry to almost everybody that has European ancestry today," says ...