Eating one egg a day lowers the risk of developing the lifestyle disease, as it's known, and now researchers have discovered why they have their protective effects.

Just seeing eggs as being high in cholesterol is simplistic; instead, they contain many bio-active compounds that are good for us, say researchers from the University of Eastern Finland.

Sweeteners such as sucralose seem to affect the way the body handles sugar, or glucose, in the blood. They also appear to raise glucose levels after a meal, which means the body must produce more insulin to break it down, and that's the start of a cycle that can lead to type 2 diabetes, say researchers from the Adelaide Medical School.

The calories in the drink could make you obese and increase your risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease while those in starch won't have any harmful effect at all, say researchers from the University of California at Davis.

The sexes seem to respond differently to a low-carb diet. Men lose body fat quickly, while the benefits for women are less obvious, but more significant: their arteries become healthier and more flexible, and this reduces their risk of heart disease from hardening of the arteries.

This unexpected difference was noticed by researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine when they put 20 middle-aged and pre-diabetic men and women on a low-carb diet. By the end of the four weeks of the study, the men had lost an average of 6.3 per cent of body fat and women lost 4.4 per cent. But the level of arterial stiffness in the men hadn't changed, whereas the women had seen a big improvement.

Hardening of the arteries is one of the first signs of heart disease, and it seems to affect women more than men, and so a low-carb diet could be especially beneficial. Research group leader Elizabeth Parks explained that flexible arteries help maintain heart health. "You want flexible vessels that expand slowly as the blood flows through them," she said.

Artery hardening can be a natural process of ageing, she said, that can be accelerated by obesity, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, all factors that increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

(Source: Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, 2018; doi: 10.1139/apnm-2018-0113)

https://www.wddty.com/news/2018/07/low-carb-diet-reduces-diabetes-risk-in-four-weeks.html?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews_19072018&bt_ee=pjiTzG+7HZ949kHwA/vaqb/T20xuJyZJT4enzXSzKXkvkyf9UI0JDdc6LaCmRxtr&bt_ts=1531994742867

Underlying the usual symptoms are raised levels of MG (methylglyoxal), a glucose metabolite that is a by-product of cell activity, say researchers from Heidelberg University Hospital in Germany.

Breakfast helps the body process sugars more efficiently—and it's having high levels of blood sugars that can lead to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.