Eat Sugar to Cure Diabetes?

Findings published in Cell Metabolism early in April may show that diabetics should in fact eat sugar to help stimulate the growth of beta cells. Beta Cells are mainly situated in the Pancreas on the Islets (Hormone producing regions of the pancreas). They produce Insulin, which is a hormone (had by both Males and Females) that helps to regulate the amount of glucose present in the blood. If there is too much sugar present in the blood, it can result in cells being killed. People who have an Insulin deficiency are called diabetics, and have to carefully monitor their intake of sugars very carefully as not to destroy their bodies from the inside-out.

The Islets of the pancreas are the little blue dots. Hormones such as Insulin are produced there.

http://www.walgreens.com/marketing/library/graphics/images/en/13990.jpg

 Benjamin Glaser and Yuval Dor from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem conducted an experiment to detect whether the Beta cells in a normal (un-diabetic) organism had the ability to regenerate if depleted. Through tampering with their genes, the scientists wiped about 80 percent of Beta Cells out in a group of mice, and made them diabetics. To their surprise, 4 to 6  weeks later, the mice's blood sugar levels had come back to normal and to some extent, the Beta Cells had regrown. They concluded that the cells did have some regenerative properties, even if they might not work in true diabetics. Now that they new that it was there, they wanted to know what made it happen. Again, they wiped out the Beta Cells in a group of mice, but this time they transplanted them into other regions of the body, making sure that blood sugar stayed at normal levels. This ensured that the remaining Insulin producing cells of the pancreas were not the sole way of getting insulin and thus did not have to work so hard. The cells stopped regenerating completely. This led them to think that the beta cells regenerated because of high amounts of Glucose. This does not mean that Diabetics should eat sugar. But drugs such as glucokinase that boost Beta Cell growth might also help by making them generate again. This could possibly mean a future cure for diabetes.






Saey, Tina Hesman. "Sugar Fuels Growth of Insulin-Making Cells."
     ScienceNews.org. Science News, 4 Apr. 2010. Web. 8 Apr. 2011.
     <http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/72225/title/
     Sugar_fuels_growth_of_insulin-making_cells>.