The most interesting topic that I found in our review articles was in “Young adult obese subjects with and without insulin resistance: what is the role of chronic inflammation and how to weigh it non-invasively” in The Journal of Inflammation. The method they used in answering the question of their paper, whether insulin resistance can be independent of metabolic syndrome, was by looking at the C-reactive protein and Fibrinogen levels associated with chronic inflammation in patients with metabolic syndrome. One of their ways to measure this was longitudinal spleen size. The paper found that the spleen becomes enlarged in young obese children with insulin resistance as opposed to young obese children without insulin resistance, spleen size is associated with insulin resistance and steatosis, and concluded that spleen size is a good way to diagnose insulin resistance. When do you usually hear about the spleen, a lymph organ with the main function of filtering red blood cells, playing any kind of role in diabetes? I tried looking up other articles that also showed any links between the Spleen and diabetes. Some articles tried to prove a causation pattern where a swollen spleen was because of diabetes. Others are finding new ways to use the cells of the spleen to find ways to treat diabetes by transferring spleen stem cells from a “diabetes resistant” rat to a “diabetes prone” rat. Here are some of the articles that I found interesting about this.
http://www.journal-inflammation.com/content/6/1/6
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/38/1/24.abstract
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/41/4/527.short
http://sageke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/2005/3/pe2
Does this mean if you remove the spleen, you can't get diabetes?
ReplyDeleteHmmm...I think it could be that if you remove the diabetes, you can't get a big spleen.
ReplyDeleteI did a health check using this high tech device where you insert your fingers into a contraption (from Japan). It produces a numerical report of the organs performance in the body. A PC printout generated provides the assessment. The technician looked at me and asked if I had diabetes. I was astonished and asked why. He said that the reading for the spleen was below normal and he said that such a reading indicates a diabetic condition (TCM theory). Wow! Poor spleen performance means that the body is not able to properly transform what you eat into energy etc and indicates metabolic dysfunctions. This calls for a dietary change - reduce cold/raw foods, no fried foods, the rest you can find yourself on the internet at TCM websites... I read an interesting BBC article about British medical researchers discovering that the spleen can produce insulin and that they are planning to find a way of inducing it to do this to help those who do not produce enough from their pancreas. BTW - it's been discovered that the brain, small intestine, liver and even stomach can all produce insulin. But insulin is, according to some researchers, not the key. It is not even needed. What needs attention is Glucagon, insulin's antagonist. If Glucagon can be controlled, even stopped, insulin becomes superfluous. How's that for metabolic enlightenment?
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