Vascular insulin resistance is a feature of obesity and types 2 diabetes that contributes to vascular disease.
In a study from the University of Missouri, scientists found the first evidence in humans that short-term lifestyle changes can disrupt the response to insulin in blood vessels.
It’s also the first study to show men and women react differently to these changes.
In the study, researchers examined vascular insulin resistance in 36 young and healthy men and women by exposing them to 10 days of reduced physical activity, cutting their step count from 10,000 to 5,000 steps per day.
The participants also increased their sugary beverage intake to six cans of soda per day.
The team showed that only in men did the sedentary lifestyle and high sugar intake causes decreased insulin-stimulated leg blood flow and a drop in a protein called adropin, which regulates insulin sensitivity and is an important biomarker for heart disease.
These findings underscore a sex-related difference in the development of vascular insulin resistance induced by adopting a lifestyle high in sugar and low in exercise
This is the first evidence in humans that vascular insulin resistance can be provoked by short-term adverse lifestyle changes.
It’s also the first documentation of sex-related differences in the development of vascular insulin resistance in association with changes in adropin levels.
The team would next like to examine how long it takes to reverse these vascular and metabolic changes and more fully assess the impact of the role of sex in the development of vascular insulin resistance.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about a new cause of type 2 diabetes, and high vitamin D levels linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies about a high-protein diet linked to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, and results showing Mediterranean diet could help reduce the diabetes risk by 30%.
The study was conducted by Camila Manrique-Acevedo et al and published in the journal Endocrinology.
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