Chicken or Egg? How Mice Have Helped Solve This Question

It’s been known that high insulin levels often come hand in hand with rising weight for a long time. Obese or overweight people tend to have much higher levels of insulin that others, this is what causes the eventual insulin resistance which occurs before people contract type two diabetes. The link between weight and insulin has been established for a long time but as to which preceded the other, well it’s all very chick and egg. Some scientists have argued that bigger bodies simply produce more insulin and others have said that higher levels of insulin mean that the body doesn’t process calories as it should do, leading to weight gain. Up until very recently there was no real way of working out which was the more likely case and scientists argued back and forth.

A recent study with mice seems to have finally decided it and was backed up by another study into type one diabetes. Type ones’ take insulin for their whole lives but don’t generally contract their condition which obese or overweight as the instigating factors are different.
One set of mice has relatively low insulin levels and the other set had a much higher level of the hormone. Both sets were fed a relatively fatty diet in the same quantities as each other but it was only the mice with the higher levels of insulin which put on any weight. Mice with lower levels of insulin in their blood gorged themselves just as much but simply didn’t pack on the pounds like the other group did. This has led scientists to conclude that it’s a patients insulin level which can lead to a predilection towards weight gain.
In a lot of cases with type one diabetics, use of insulin for their whole lives can make managing their weight very difficult. In some cases this can lead to double diabetes, which is thankfully still quite rare but is on the rise.

So there we have it, chicken and egg solved in terms of diabetes!