From Your Health Journal…..”Good morning, as I have mentioned here before with reviews of other online health articles, The Times of India has some great writers and great stories, so I strongly recommend your visiting their site (link provided at bottom of page). Today’s article review discusses ways to treat diabetes and obesity. The article suggests that inhibiting a particular molecule produced naturally in the body, muscle loss due to aging or illnesses could be prevented. Blocking the same molecule will also trigger the body to go into a ‘fat-burning mode’ that will fight obesity and also treat the common form of diabetes. With the growing rates of diabetes and obesity around the world, this is great news. It will be interesting to read more about this topic in the future. Please visit The Times of India web site for the full story, which I found very interesting. Happy holidays!
From the article…..
A new research by an Indian origin scientist and his team has paved the way for new treatments for aging, obesity and diabetes.
The study found that by inhibiting a particular molecule produced naturally in the body, muscle loss due to aging or illnesses could be prevented.
Blocking the same molecule will also trigger the body to go into a ‘fat-burning mode’ that will fight obesity and also treat the common form of diabetes.
The exciting discoveries have led the Nanyang Technological University scientists to embark on joint clinical research with local hospitals to further validate their findings, which were previously carried out on animals.
Associate Professor Ravi Kambadur and his team from NTU’s School of Biological Sciences found that a protein called Myostatin, which controls muscle cell growth, is responsible for initiating muscle loss.
When excess levels of Myostatin is bound to a muscle cell, it induces heavy loss of mitochondria (the part of the cell responsible for energy production that keeps a cell alive), which in turn causes the muscle cell to waste or lose muscle tissue (atrophy) due to the ‘lack of energy’.
Under normal healthy conditions, small loss of Mitochondria is needed for the regeneration of new cells, but when a patient is suffering from chronic diseases or is bedridden (and muscles are not used often), this process is disrupted due to high levels of myostatin which results in increased mitochondrial loss and muscle atrophy.
Prof Kambadur said recent studies have shown that extreme muscle wasting can lead to death.
“For example, about 30 per cent of cancer patients die not because of cancer, but because of muscle loss also known as cachexia,” said Prof Kambadur.
“When someone is suffering from a chronic disease and doesn’t eat enough, the body starts to generate energy by breaking down muscle proteins and that is the reason we see a lot of muscle wasting under chronic disease conditions,” he added.
“Over the years, our research has revealed that this type of muscle wasting is initiated by excess levels of myostatin in the body. If we block myostatin from binding to cells, then muscles won’t waste away and we can then mitigate the effects of ageing and chronic diseases,” he added.
To read the full article…..Click here