Video: Body Weight in Type II Diabetes

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The main reason people develop type II diabetes is because they are overweight. Learn how body fat encourages type II diabetes in this free video from a nutritionist specializing in diabetic diets.

- Resources for Diabetics
- Body Weight in Type II Diabetes

Video Transcript

One of the principle reasons why a person develops type II diabetes is because they are overweight. And the reason is because as the body increases the amount of fat that it accumulates particularly if it's in the stomach region, then the body becomes - each cell becomes less and less sensitive to the insulin it produces. It also because it's creating more cells, does not produce enough insulin to handle the excess cells. So, as the body loses weight, reduces cell size, reduces cell number that also brings the body back to a state where it can handle the insulin that it does produce, but for the most part there is something that we call insulin resistance that is created when the person increases their weight. And one of the best ways to think of it is this: when the body has a lot of excess energy it loses its incentive to get new energy into the cell because all this excess is hanging around. As you lose weight, the cells perk up. "Aw, we're losing energy now. We need to capture some energy." And so by losing weight, you force the cells to try to work harder to extract that energy. When the cells are full of energy, full of the fat, they don't - there's less of less of the motivation to extract more sugar out of the bloodstream. And, so by losing weight, you improve the overall condition of diabetes. And then often people can put type II diabetes in remission through a weight loss. We found this to be especially true when someone has the gastric bypass surgery. Often within two months of the surgery, they have lost 50 pounds and the diabetes has been put completely in remission. Even if they were taking insulin or other oral medications.

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Body Weight in Type II Diabetes

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