WHAT DIABETES REALLY IS
I believe diabetes is caused by humans eating carbohydrates 24/7 and relying on modern conveniences instead of facing a true winter like mammals are supposed to. In fact, I think our brain rapidly evolved because of a sped-up epigenetic programme due to Factor X (speaks about this in the last chapter), and this allowed us to reduce normal hibernation down to two hours within our sleep cycle to control autophagy. This system has little room for error. When we eat outside out circadian rhythm it causes the entire system to misfire and diabetes is the result. Sound hard to believe?
Many scientists today believe the light ccle has the most important impact on our circadian biology and metabolism. Light cycles are important to all life, but
most researchers are apparently unaware that mammals have an innate ability to change their internal clocks when their environment changes. When its cold, humans stop using light cycles to yoke metabolism to sleep. We have an epigenetic switch that stops the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the part of the brain that generates a 24-hour rhythm, from using light when it is cold. This is because light cycles are not important in the freezing cold because carbohydrates cannot grow in cold. Evolution alerts mammals to the changing seasons through temperature, not light.
However, this alert no longer happens for modern man, who eats carbs 24/7 and doesn't endure much of winters cold. We have warm clothes, energy efficient houses, heated cars, and exposure to LED computer and television screens at night. These things elevate inflammatory cytokines, causing leptin resistance. I explain the complex biochemistry in my cold thermogenesis series on my
blog, with cites included. But for now, I want you to be aware of this metabolic trap. It's mere presence is shocking enough, but it's implications are far greater for modern humans with respect to diabetes.
Many say the say the introduction of artificial light altered our ability to sense light and dark. I think most people are aware of the degree to which circadian rhythms destroy metabolic function, laying the foundation for diseases.
A circadian mismatch causes the slow erosion of the autophagy process. The autophagy process repairs and recycles proteins while we sleep, which extends life.Reduces autophagy leads to heart failure. Diabetics usually has sleep apnea, which causes poor autophagy and a lowered DHEA level. Biologic mismatches are best measured in animals by looking at heart failure and poor sleep, which for humans the rates are both staggering. We got so smart so fast that we controlled the environment to the point of our genetic detriment by disrupting the autophagy process.
When one looks at the biochemistry of sleep and truly understands the power of autophagy for longevity, it becomes apparent that perhaps sleep is our primordial condition, not wakefullness. If I am correct we evolved consciousness over time.
In extreme cold environments, the process of autophagy because "super sensitized" to save energy while increasing our metabolic capabilities. In a TED talk, sleep researcher Jessa Gamble said humans living in dark, deep, cold shafts for a study become much more energized and productive. In fact, they improved so much that most wanted to go back to living in chafts after the study. Why? Cold, dark environments sensitize the human autophagy process without us actually having to sleep at all!! This is something we can't do in long light cycles. Diabetics never enter this pathway, which is why they are always energy depleted and tired. To achieve sensitive autophagy in light, we have to sleep well. Diabetics can't. This is an example of how metabolism and biochemistry can rewire in cold and dark environmnets. Diabetics need winter more than they know. Infact, sleep is heavily selected for in cold, having influenced the design of mamallian nervous systems by evolution. This is why mammals can sleep so long underground in sub-zero temperatures and survive.
Radical Rule #1 A Radical Rule About Sleep
Sleep and cold environments were our ancestors' primordial condition, and hence the starting point for life on our planet. If we assume this to be true, it explains why epigenetics(outside influences on our gene expression) is the dominant player. I think evolution used epigenetics to pass environmental information to succeeding generations. In cold, our cell cycle slows down. To compensate, epigeneitcs speeds up. Life at it's genesis was likely static. To get the nutrients it needs, and organism used passive diffusion, which allows compounds in the surrounding environment to pass through the membrane. This manner of nutrient collection is highly inefficient, by the sensitivity of autophagy in cold made this process biologically plausible for much of the evolutionary history. However, in order to improve access to nutrients, it appears organisms evolved into wakefulsness to obtain them, using sleep for autophagic repair.
I believe this metabolism remains in every organism today. If you ask sleep researchers (I have), they have told me this is a correct assumption. Because of this, I believe that sleep and autophagic processes are highly conserved across all species on our planet.
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Diabetics often have cognitive impairments and suffer from higher rates of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. I believe this is all tied to altered cell membrane signalling from carbohydrates and from poor autophagy. Reseachers currently assume that the only way a mammal can change its fatty acid concentraition is through diet. However, the PLoS ONE artivele "Changes in 'Good' Fatty Acid Concentration of Inner Organs might be largely
Independent of Diet"
shows that n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids in cell membranes increase dramatically before the start of hibernation in marmots. This is to prepare the body, and particularly the heart, to function at very low temperatures. The transition to a higher content of n-6 fatty acids in membranes takes place rapidly just before the animals enter hibernations. The changes are reversed, again very quickly, at the termination of hibernation in spring, when the animals return to higher body temperatures.
During both of these periods the animals food is unavailable as it is buried under snow, so it is a mechanisms that happens INDEPENDENT OF IMMEDIATE DIET.
What suprised researchers was that the n-6 atty acids are transported preferentially over other fatty acids, and the mechanism remains a mystery. The research also suggests the changes come from an internal clock, as the animals are iisolated from environmental cues while hibernating deep underground.
Lets examine why evolution may have allowed mammals to do this.
The stimulus for hibernation in eutherian (placental) mammals is tied to high dietary carbohydrate intake (proven fact already in science and not controversial) and transfer of omega 6 into cell membranes prior to hibernation. This was not known until this article came out. The stimulus of plentiful dietary carbohydrates is a metabolic sign that they should soon den, fat and happy. This metabolic signal seems to change the fatty acid synthase (FAS) enzyme in the mammalian gut lining. FAS is crucial for the production of lipids and is regulated by insulin. People with diabetes or insulin resistance have defects in FAS. Also, studies show mice without the enzyme in their intestine develop chronic gut inflammation, which is a powerful predictor of insulin resistance.
Is Diabetes an Evolutionary Adaptation for Survival?
Why would evolution signal a mammal to replace its own cell membranes with Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids? Why should we pay attention to it?
Because it has major implications for modern humans, who are direct descendants of these animals. Morover, this evolutionary design allows for the potential development of an interesting conundrum. It appears that the incorperation of PUFAs into cell membranes is a normal sign for mamallian hibernation. After all, mammals evolved in earth's polar environments. I also learned from organic chemistry that high concentrations of PUFAs in the cell membrane makes them very fluid in cold environments so they dont freeze. It's a cellular anti-freeze! I also learn from Canadian frog biology that high glucose levels also act as an antifreeze for animals in extreme environments. This is an important mechanism as all organ function depends on proper cell signalling.
These revelations led me to a shocking insight.
Could diabetes be an ancient epigenetic programme for survival, and not a disease after all?
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Diabetes is required in mammals, which are designed to adapt to cold environments.
Maybe, just maybe, it has become thought of as a Neolithic disease in humans because our ability to control our environment has dismissed our need to hibernate. After all, we know evolution is moving today faster than our genome can adapt, as many researchers have pointed out many times. Remember, we still have our mammalian paleolithic genes, which cotnrol our use of carbohydrates and the upregulation of PUFAs in our cell membranes. What it not so obvious, however, is that our brains evolution has outpaced our biology, creating a mismatch in this system. As a result, we view Diabetes as a disease when it is actually an evolutionary novelty created by our own rapid evolution.
This is how I see diabetes today. The skeptics will jump down my throat and point out that type 1 diabetes is a genetic disease. I think type 1 and type 1.5 diabetes (slow onset type 1 diabetes) are decidedly epigenetic phenomena of this evolutionary mismatch. Epigenetics has sped up. This is why humans have no ability to stop diabetes once it starts, unless they get themselves into a cold environment. It is also why modern medicine has no cure, and why it remains a revolving-door disease, filled with wallet biopsies and an increasing number of ineffective medications.
Friends have asked "If this is not a disease, then how does nature cure diabetes on it's own?" Well, can you cure a disease that is not a disease to begin with?
Insulin resistance expands fat to store the carbohydrates we ate during the long light cycles of summer. The process to reverse this system is hybernation in freezing cold. But since we no longer hybernate you need to consider how you eat carbohydrates within the light cycles. Mabe what you thoght was safe really isn't.
Cold is what completely reverses insulin resistance in mammals and wakes them up when conditions are better for life. Humans abandoned this ability in our evolutionary history because we control our environoment regardless of the temperature, but we stll have the hibernation mechanisms within us, if we eat outside those mechanisms we get modern diabetes-we can eat all day year round, or we can eat a banana from Chile in the Arctic in the dead of winter. Do you think evolution has a plan for these circumstances yet? No, it doesn not, and diabetes is the answer
The result is we have created a world where we can eat carbohydrates and PUFAs 24/7 but cna no longer access evolution solution for insulin resistance it also makes sense why we have no hardwired metabolic pathways for fat removal but cold thermogenesis does it remarkably well
