In an era of increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, just about everyone knows that one of the leading risk factors for diabetes is obesity. But many of us don't know why this is the case.
In simple terms obesity is linked to an increased risk of diabetes because as we gain weight we become ore resistant to the insulin we produce. In fact, as we lose weight we regain much of our lost insulin sensitivity. Our bodies start functioning better overall.
The link between diabetes and obesity then must have something to do with weight. What do people with a lot of weight typically have more of than people without a lot of weight? Primarily, obese people have more fat. So it is likely that the link between obesity and diabetes is found in the fatty tissue.
Primary Suspect: the Fat Compound Known as Resistin
The possible link between fat and diabetes was first noted as resistin in the January 2001 issue of "Nature." It was discovered that resistin in the fat cells acts as a hormone which makes the body resistant to the insulin it produces. An interesting follow up by scientists was the development of the drug Rosiglitazone, which suppresses the resistin.
One of the reasons scientists are relatively sure that resistin in the fat is an important part of the development of diabetes in obese people is that when scientists injected resistin into mice they suddenly became insulin resistant mice. When the mice were given antibodies that attacked the resistin, they became much less resistant to their own insulin.
More Research on Resistin is Needed
As promising as this research is, it doesn't say exactly if and how the resistin works, only that an increase in resistin is correlated to an increase in insulin resistance. More importantly, resistin hasn't even been found in human fat cells. The idea is that humans must have a similar hormone to resistin that takes the same sort of action. But that is speculation without any answers as of now. What we do know, is that obesity is strongly linked to diabetes and that obesity consists of increased amounts of fat.
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