There is an extensive body of research that reveals how critical glucose uptake and utilization are for many types of cancer. What the research has been unable to determine is exactly how cancer cells might manipulate their environment so as to increase the availability of glucose.
Are Cancer Cells Hijacking Your Metabolism?
The Insulin Sweet Spot: Is Lower Better?
We commonly think that if something is good for our health, that more of it is even better, right? More kale never hurt anyone. Putting on extra sunscreen may not protect us from even more UV rays, but it certainly won’t cause excess damage!
But is that actually always true? How about with insulin, which we’re commonly told to keep as low as possible? Continue reading
Subversion of Systemic Glucose Metabolism as a Mechanism to Support the Growth of Leukemia Cells
Energy Medicine – Fundamental in Alzheimer’s
Energy medicine is now front-and-center as a major consideration in trying to unravel the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease. It’s now clear that a disruption of cellular energetics is fundamentally involved in the disease.
Multiple research studies have demonstrated that a decline in brain metabolism, specifically the brain’s utilization of glucose, is seen long before there are any clinical manifestations of Alzheimer’s disease. In other words, the first observable event in Alzheimer’s is the finding of reduced brain glucose utilization on a special type of brain scan. This observation presages the clinical manifestations like declining memory, judgment, and executive function by as much as several decades.
Why the brain suffers from this decline in its ability to use glucose as a fuel remains undefined, but new research is making the case that the hormone insulin is playing an important role in this event.
Insulin Resistance and Alzheimer’s Disease: Bioenergetic Linkages
Taking Control of the “Alzheimer’s Gene”
Alzheimer’s disease, now affecting about 5 ½ million Americans, is a disease for which we have no meaningful treatment whatsoever. That said, it certainly makes sense to look at various factors that contribute to the risk for this disease. Continue reading
Midlife insulin resistance, APOE genotype, and late-life brain amyloid accumulation
Insulin Resistance and Cognitive Decline
I want to dive a bit deeper today into our discussion of the relationship between diabetes (and even mild elevations in blood sugar), and the overall health of your brain. With that, it’s becoming increasingly clear the lifestyle factors that impact metabolic disease, of which insulin resistance is at the core, also play a key role in influencing the health of the brain and long-term cognitive capacity. Let’s look at this recent study published in Experimental and Molecular Medicine in today’s video. Continue reading
