Diabulimia: Diabetic Young Women Skipping Shots to Lose Weight
The BBC is reporting that thousands of young women and teenage women with type 1 diabetes are intentionally skipping injections to fuel weight loss.
People with type 1 diabetes need daily injections to help them absorb glucose to use as fuel. Failure to take correct doses can lead to rapid weight loss.
Charity Diabetes UK estimates that up to one-third of young women with the disease miss injections to stay thin.
Doctors warn that the “diabulimia” eating disorder can lead to blindness, heart and kidney disease.
US doctors recently went public on their concerns about the practice.
It is very sad to read about teen girls and young women suffering from type 1 diabetes engaging in the very dangerous behavior of skipping insulin shots simply to lose weight. You can read more about diabulimia here and here. A personal story about diabulimia can be found here.
New Blood Test May Measure Visceral Fat
The BBC reports that a new blood test that measures the amount of a protein called RBP4 in the blood may help determine the amount of fat around a person’s internal organs. The scientists doing the research are hopeful that cutting RBP4 may have health benefits.
The researchers believe that measuring RBP4 would potentially be an effective way to assess body fat, and that treatment to cut levels of the protein might also have health benefits.
In previous work, they showed that cutting RBP4 levels in obese mice helped the animals to make better use of the hormone insulin - and thus reduce their risk of diabetes.
They also showed that measures to improve insulin sensitivity in human subjects resulted in a drop in RPB4 levels.
Researcher Dr Matthias Bluher said: “We believe that in the near future, measurements of RBP4 serum concentrations might serve as a novel biomarker for visceral obesity and increased risk for type 2 diabetes and other adverse outcomes of visceral obesity.
“In addition, pharmacological interventions that reduce RBP4 levels might be a new approach in the treatment of metabolic syndrome and visceral obesity.”
The only known function of RBP4 is to carry vitamin A in the blood.
Measuring visceral fat is important because just because people appear fat on the outside doesn’t mean they have a lot of visceral fat. There are also people known as tofis (thin on the outside, fat on the inside) who appear thin but carry a lot of visceral fat, or fat around their internal organs.