subject: Control Inflammation To Reduce The Risk Of Diabetes & Diabetic Complications [print this page] Inflammation And Type 2 Diabetes Epidemic
The current diabetes statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention are staggering, disclosing that nearly 26 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, of which about 7 million do not know they are diabetic. In addition, at least 79 million Americans have prediabetes, a state with an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes, the silent killer, is not a standalone disorder. It has far-reaching effects causing cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in industrialized societies.
Inflammation Plays A Key Role In Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that alters the way your body processes sugar (glucose), your body's main source of fuel. It sets off insulin resistance, i.e., failure of the body to respond to its own insulin - a hormone that controls the movement of sugar into cells and keeps a normal glucose level in the body.
More and more research shows that chronic inflammation (also known as systemic low-grade inflammation) can turn your body resistant to insulin. The elevated inflammatory cytokines can also cause pancreatic cell death or turn pancreas into fibrosis. When this occurs, your body will not produce enough insulin to maintain the normal level of glucose. Insulin resistance or insufficient insulin secretion leads to Type 2 diabetes. Untreated, the consequence of Type 2 diabetes can be life-threatening.
Inflammation Is The Key To Obesity-Diabetes Link
While obesity is one of the biggest risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, inflammation is the determining factor. New studies suggest that without inflammation, obesity does not trigger insulin resistance or Type 2 diabetes.
When a person becomes obese, they develop steatosis (increased fat in the liver), which leads to infiltration of inflammatory cells into the liver. Obesity also leads to accumulation of inflammatory cells in fat tissue. These inflammatory cells are key players in the immune and inflammatory responses.
When inflammatory cells move into fat or liver tissue, they release cytokines, which are chemical messenger molecules used by immune and nerve cells to communicate. These cytokines cause the adjacent liver, muscle or fat cells to become insulin resistant, which in turn leads to Type 2 diabetes.
Inflammation Is Also The Key To Diabetic Complications
Diabetic complications are accountable for the vast majority of diabetes-related deaths and inflammation plays essential role in all diabetic complications.
Cardiovascular Disease (CVD): Inflammation results in vascular damage and plaque buildup in coronary arteries. Inflammation also increases risk for heart attack (myocardial infarction) and stroke by causing the plaque to rupture and clot. CVD accounts for 65 percent of all diabetes-related deaths. People with Type 2 diabetes are 2-4 times more likely to have a heart attack. Moreover, these heart attacks are more serious and more likely to cause death in people with diabetes than in those without diabetes.
Nephropathy: Accumulating evidence suggests that infiltration of inflammatory cells into the kidney micro vessels causes the occurrence of diabetic nephropathy, the common cause of kidney failure and end-stage renal disease.
Retinopathy: Inflammation produces retinal vasculature injury and leads to blood vessel breakdown and macular edema, the main reason of vision loss in diabetes. Clinical studies also indicate that increased inflammation is associated with the more severe types of diabetic retinopathy.
Neuropathy: Diabetic patients experience substantial wound-healing deficit and foot ulcer (diabetic foot). These lesions are featured by exaggerated and sustained inflammatory responses. Experimental and clinical evidence suggests that hyper-inflammation causes wound matrix degradation, impaired cell growth, and increased cell death.
Control Inflammation To Reduce The Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
Current advices to prevent type 2 diabetes focus on lifestyle modifications, such as diet and exercise. Clinical trials have proven the efficacy of lifestyle intervention, as well as pharmacologic interventions that target glycemic control and treatment of other cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity. In spite of this, diabetes still developed in a substantial percentage of individuals who obtained intensive intervention in these trials.
Because inflammation plays an important role in type 2 diabetes and diabetic complications, control of inflammation has been recommended as a novel approach to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes.
There is a large selection of anti-inflammatory drugs including well-known non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Nevertheless, long-term use of anti-inflammatory drugs has been linked with serious side effects and safer anti-inflammatory treatments are unquestionably needed.
Anti-inflammatory Herbal Remedies For Control Of Inflammation And Diabetic Complications
There are alternative solutions to relieve chronic inflammation. A large number of medicinal herbs have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Many of them have been extensively studied and a large pool of valuable information is readily available.
Based on scientific evidence, anti-inflammatory remedies may offer a number of advantages:
--Target a broad panel of inflammatory mediators without suppressing body's natural (innate) immune responses.
--Promote a balanced immune response, the critical defense system against stress, infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion.
--Help restore body's ability to make natural antioxidants, the most effective disease-fighting and anti-aging molecules in the body.
Anti-inflammatory herbs for instance scute (Scutellaria baicalensis), coptis (Coptis chinensis), astragalus (Astragalus membranaceus), and turmeric (Curcuma longa) are widely used to treat and prevent diabetes and diabetic complications such as diabetic wounds and diabetic nephropathy.
