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Researchers specializing in diabetes employ an astonishing range of animal species in their quest to understand human diabetes. Red pandas, for example, are the only other species that shares our taste for NutraSweet (which may explain why they are in danger of extinction). Lab rats have similar taste receptors in their stomachs to the sweet and bitter receptors that enable humanr bodies to absorb sugar and reject toxins. And bottle-nosed dolphins offer new insights about insulin resistance.
When a dolphin is experiencing low blood sugar levels, it can't exactly swim into the underwater supermarket to pick up a carton of Haagen-Dazs. The only option for an energy-starved dolphin is to eat more fish.
Fish are a great source of protein but not a particularly good source of sugars. As in humans, the dolphin has to process the fish by sending excess amino acids through their liver to be stripped down into glucose and the nitrogen part of the amino acids excreted as urea. Glucose is then released slowly and only in small amounts. A human who ate only fish, by the way, would also create sugars by the same process.
Veterinary epidemiologist Stephanie Venn-Watson of the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego has discovered that dolphins keep their blood sugar levels up when they are not eating fish by becoming temporarily Type 2 diabetic or insulin resistant. By becoming insulin resistant when fasting, they are able to keep their large brain supplied with sugar. It works to their advantage.
When a dolphin's stomach is empty, it's cells become insulin-resistant and it's blood sugar levels soar. This guarantees it's large and active brain is not deprived of the fuel it needs to function. As soon as the dolphin eats, however, cells in the rest of it's body resume their normal use of insulin. It's really controlled Type 2 diabetes!
Dolphins can also develop a disease that causes Type 2 diabetes in humans, hemochromatosis, or iron overload disease. In this condition, the lining of the colon absorbs too much iron from digested animal blood. In dolphins, and people with hemochromatosis, insulin levels go higher and higher as the iron in the bloodstream interferes with it's normal activity.
Iron-overload in dolphins, however, is not associated with the system-wide problems caused by iron overload in humans.
As scientists learn more about dolphin physiology without harming their subjects, many new insights into the nature of Type 2 diabetes may be revealed.
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Beverleigh Piepers RN... the Diabetes Detective.
http://drugfreetype2diabetes.com/blog
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