A to study recently published in Endocrinology by researchers at the University of Missouri School of Medicine revealed that short-term lifestyle changes can disrupt blood vessel responses to insulin. This study is considered the first to provide human evidence, as well as the first to show that men and women respond differently to these changes.
According to WHO cardiovascular illnesses are the leading cause of death worldwide, claiming an estimated 17.9 million lives each year, with more than 4 in 5 of these deaths being due to heart attacks and strokes, with a third of these deaths occurring prematurely in under 70 years old.
Vascular disease affects the circulatory system, arteries, veins, lymphatic vessels and network of blood vessels in the body, some types of this disease include but are not limited to aneurysms, atherosclerosis, blood clots, coronary heart disease, stroke, varicose veins and vasculitis. Vascular insulin resistance is a feature of obesity and type 2 diabetes that contributes to vascular disease.
In this study, researchers examined vascular insulin resistance in healthy men and women by exposing them to 10 days of reduced physical activity by reducing their number of steps from 10,000 to 5,000 per day while by increasing their consumption of sugary drinks to 6 cans of soda per day.
“We know that the incidence of insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease is lower in premenopausal women than in men, but we wanted to see how men and women responded to reduced physical activity and increased sugar in their diet for a short time,” Camila said. Manrique-Acevedo, MD, associate professor of medicine.
The results revealed that a sedentary lifestyle and increased sugar consumption caused decreased insulin-stimulated blood flow to the legs and decreased levels of the protein adropin which regulates insulin sensitivity and is an important biomarker of disease cardiovascular, but interestingly, this was only observed in men.
“These results point to a sex-related difference in the development of vascular insulin resistance induced by adopting a high-sugar, low-exercise lifestyle,” Manrique-Acevedo said. “To our knowledge, this is the first evidence in humans that vascular insulin resistance can be caused by adverse short-term lifestyle changes, and is the first documentation of related differences to sex in the development of vascular insulin resistance in association with changes in adropin levels.”
The researchers would like to build on this study by then investigating how long it takes to reverse these vascular and metabolic changes as well as further examining the impact of the role of sex in the development of vascular insulin resistance. .
The study, “Young women are protected against vascular insulin resistance induced by adopting an obesogenic lifestyle,” was recently published in the journal Endocrinology. Part of the support for this study was provided by the National Institutes of Health and a VA merit grant. The content does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agency. The authors declare no potential conflict of interest.
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