Study: Caffeine Interferes with Diabetes Control

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Study: Caffeine Interferes with Diabetes Control JoAnn Guest Aug 02, 2005

17:56 PDT

 

Mon Jul 26, 7:56 AM ET

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Caffeine could interfere with the body's ability

to handle blood sugar, thus worsening type 2 diabetes, U.S. researchers

said on Monday.

 

• Type 2 Diabetes (American Diabetes Association)

The team at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina found a

strong correlation between caffeine intake at mealtime and increased

glucose and insulin levels among people with type 2 diabetes.

 

 

The American Diabetes Association says that at least 90 percent of the

17 million Americans diagnosed with diabetes have type 2, in which the

body either does not produce enough insulin or cells ignore the insulin,

which the body needs to convert food into energy.

 

 

The findings are significant enough that the researchers recommend

people with diabetes consider reducing or eliminating caffeine from

their diets.

 

 

" In a healthy person, glucose is metabolized within an hour or so after

eating.

 

Diabetics, however, do not metabolize glucose as efficiently, " said

James Lane, a psychiatry professor who led the study.

 

" It appears that diabetics who consume caffeine are likely having a

harder time regulating their insulin and glucose levels than those who

don't take caffeine. "

 

 

Writing in the journal Diabetes Care, Lane and colleagues said they

studied 14 habitual coffee drinkers with type 2 diabetes.

The researchers put the volunteers on a controlled diet.

They took their medications, had their blood tested and then were given

caffeine capsules. More blood was taken then and after giving the

volunteers a liquid meal supplement.

 

 

Caffeine had little effect on glucose and insulin levels when the

volunteers fasted, the researchers found. But after the liquid meal,

those who were given caffeine had a 21 percent increase in their glucose

level and insulin rose 48 percent.

 

 

" The goal of clinical treatment for diabetes is to keep the person's

blood glucose down, " Lane said in a statement. " It seems that caffeine,

by further impairing the metabolism of meals, is something diabetics

ought to consider avoiding.

 

Some people already watch their diet and exercise regularly.

Avoiding caffeine might be another way to better manage their disease.

In fact, it's possible that staying away from caffeine could provide

bigger benefits altogether. "

 

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Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 7:46 pm

Post subject: Your Brain on Frappuccino

www.alternative-medicine-message-boards.info

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Your Brain on Frappuccino

By Roger Downey, Seattle Weekly

Posted on August 20, 2004,

http://www.alternet.org/story/19622/

 

The U.S. government allocates many billions of dollars

a year to the " War on Drugs, " but it spends hardly a

penny on the most insidious, most omnipresent

" psychoactive drug " of all.

 

I refer, of course, to

caffeine (C8H10N4O2), the little alkaloid that made

Starbucks' Howard Schultz a billionaire.

 

Drug?

Indubitably: Even before it became endemic in

the human diet through use in candy bars and soft

drinks, doctors prescribed caffeine as a decongestant

and mild painkiller; users discovered its efficacy as

an appetite suppressant on their own.

 

But it would be just another minor entry in the pharmacopeia were it

not for another aspect: its powerful impact as a

" stimulant " . That's where the psychoactive aspect of caffeine kicks

in.

 

Unlike most small organic molecules, caffeine

slips through cell walls as if they weren't there. An

hour after your cuppa, caffeine's to be found in every

cell in your body, including those of the nervous

system;

 

even the famed " blood-brain barrier " is

impotent against its stealth attacks.

 

After more than a century of concentrated study,

scientists are still not entirely sure what happens

when caffeine hits the brain.

 

The current best guess is that it plugs into receptors in cells that

modulate " excitability, " the propensity of neurons to fire,

sending messages to other nerve circuits in the brain.

 

Caffeine fits these receptors well enough to prevent

their proper trigger (adenosine) from plugging in, but

not well enough to mimic the downstream calming effect

of adenosine.

 

Result: The brain remains in a state of higher excitability, alertness,

and clarity, not to mention irritability, than it would maintain without

caffeine's intrusion.

 

So far, so good; everybody recognizes the energizing

jolt a good cup of coffee delivers. (The size of the

jolt depends on the mode of delivery: An espresso

contains about a fifth of a gram of the stuff, drip

coffee only half as much.)

 

The trouble is that most of us users don't stop with one cup, and the

spread of fancied-up ways of absorbing your jolt – lattes,

Frappuccinos, and the like – has made it perilously

easy to saturate the system with a drug that, its

agreeable stimulation apart,

is pretty hard on the nervous system.

 

Some people can't even handle that one espresso

without experiencing feelings of anxiety.

 

When the dosage rises above 600 milligrams (only about three

shots' worth), a majority of imbibers experience side

effects like nervousness and irritability; many also

experience " higher blood pressure} "

without realizing it.

 

Even if your system is highly tolerant to caffeine, a

gram a day can cause irregular heartbeat and ringing

in the ears,

not to mention insomnia, outbursts of

temper, and heightened distractibility.

 

Ten grams of it and you're dead. Granted, it's almost impossible to

absorb 10 grams of caffeine by the usual methods, but

it's still a little worrisome that the difference

between a useful dose and a deadly one is a mere

matter of 50 to one.

 

Another worrisome aspect of caffeine is that many of

its users develop a tolerance to its effects – in

others words, you start with a single short and

eventually only a triple grande will do.

 

This happens with most drugs that interfere with normal

neurotransmitter pathways, which are linked in

intricate loops of potentiation and feedback.

 

When we block adenosine from its target receptors, the

nervous system tries to restore its balance by

producing more adenosine to compete with the caffeine

that's blocking it, so over time it takes more

caffeine to overcome the additional adenosine's

calming, soporific effect.

 

No two people exhibit exactly the same pattern of tolerances, so

there's no way to establish a " safe " dose except through trial

and error, leaving plenty of room for the insomnia,

heart flutters, and sour stomach that result from an

" overdose. "

 

Is caffeine a drug of abuse?

 

Americans think of themselves as mighty coffee drinkers, but in fact

they swallow less than half as much per capita (around one

espresso's worth) as the Swedes or the Brits, who,

counting tea and chocolate consumption along with

coffee, are the current world champions, putting away

nearly half a gram of caffeine a day on average.

 

On average – that's the problem with stats like these.

There are a lot of people who don't drink coffee or

tea at all, and averages don't help to discern how

caffeine use differs by age, class, and income group.

 

The most upsetting fact about caffeine is that there

is virtually no good information about the impact of

caffeine use on children and adolescents, who, thanks

to soft drinks and chocolate-packed candies have

become a major segment of the caffeine market.

 

Kids' nervous systems are not completely developed until

late adolescence, and nobody knows what effect on the

final product a dozen-plus years of steady infusion of

a powerful " alkaloid stimulan " may have.

 

On balance, Howard Schultz may be America's biggest

pusher for adults, but one of these days it may turn

out that Coke and Pepsi have a lot more to answer for.

 

© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights

reserved.

View this story online at:

http://www.alternet.org/story/19622/

_________________

JoAnn Guest

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