Burning more fat may lead to diabetes

[Guest Cory]

Science Daily had an article with a counter intuitive finding:

 

Burning more fat, less glucose could lead to diabetes, mouse models indicate

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161223115923.htm

 

Background:

Mouse muscles use glucose (carbohydrate) as fuel when the animals are awake and active and switch to fat (lipid) when they are asleep.

The switch is controlled by a molecule called histone deacetylase 3, or HDAC3.

The researchers genetically engineered laboratory mice to deplete HDAC3 only in the skeletal muscles.

 

Findings:

"When the knocked out mice ate, their blood sugar increased and insulin was released just fine, but their muscles refused to take in and use glucose," which predisposed the mice to diabetes.

Yet, when the HDAC3-knocked out mice ran on a treadmill, they showed superior endurance

 

Looking for where the extra endurance came from, they found that [the genetically engineered mice] muscles break down more amino acids. This changed the muscles' preference from glucose to lipids and allowed them to burn lipid very efficiently.

 

The finding challenges the widely-used carbohydrate-loading (carbo-loading) strategy for improving endurance performance. 

 

Cory

 

[Todd Allen]

They engineered mice such that their muscles don't take up and burn glucose.  Not at all surprising this would accelerate development of diabetes.  The article's headline is misleading though as it makes it sound like fat is the culprit as opposed to the engineered impaired glucose metabolism.

 

The carb loading strategy is already being challenged in human ultra endurance events as they are increasingly being won by low carb athletes.