As we learn more about ourselves and how we work, we learn that more than we ever imagined is connected. There’s not a part of our bodies which isn’t connected to another part, influencing one area of us will lead to us affecting another part. This revelation is imperative when it comes to medicine as to treat one condition you’ll often cause side effects, those need to be expected, minimised and less harmful than the condition itself. When treating for type one diabetes for example, patients take insulin often several times a day. It’s recently been shown in concurrent studies that insulin can actually cause people to gain weight more easily. This weight gain in type one diabetics can lead to them developing type two diabetes too, this is known as double diabetes.
So, one thing leads to another in our bodies and it’s only through understanding that, that doctors and medical professionals can successfully treat us. In a recent study which involved lab mice, it was shown that binge drinking could lead to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is actually one of the biggest symptoms of type two diabetes and those who show high levels of insulin resistance are generally treated as pre-diabetics. This means that they’re put onto an emergency treatment plan meant to improve their lifestyles, get their insulin resistance down and take them out of the high risk area for type two diabetes.
Having a drink or two isn’t an issue but when we drink to excess often or repetitively we start to cause disruption to our brains. It goes without saying that the brain is a very complex and delicately balanced system, it doesn’t take very much to throw off that balance. In terms of binge drinking, inflammation occurs in the hypothalamus region of the brain and this disrupts insulin-receptor signalling which in turn creates the insulin resistance.
Remember in life nothing is more important that moderation. Too much of anything, no matter how good for your it first appears, can be dangerous and potentially deadly!