Type II diabetes and depression are co morbid, which means
they happen together more than expected based on the rates
of each disease alone. The question among scientists is
whether one disease can cause the other or whether there
are factors that lead to both at the same time.
For example, having type II diabetes might cause people to
feel more depressed because they are sick. Likewise, having
depression might cause people to not eat healthy or get any
exercise and lead to diabetes. The relationship might be as
simple as that.
Is there more to the story?
Many scientists, me included, feel that there are common
lifestyle factors that lead to type II diabetes and
depression at the same time. There are an abundance of
studies implicating exercise (or lack of it) in the onset
of both diseases. There are also many studies highlighting
the role of nutrition in both diabetes and depression.
Now, a new study, published in the October 2007 edition of
PLOS Biology, sheds more light on this relationship with a
focus on insulin at the center. Anyone with diabetes is
well versed in the importance of insulin. It is a primary
hormone that controls blood sugar levels, which the body
needs to maintain tight control over for survival.
Insulin has many jobs
Your pancreas releases insulin into your bloodstream
whenever blood sugar levels rise. It then goes around
knocking on the doors of cells throughout your body telling
them to take some sugar out of the blood and use it to make
or store energy.
In type II diabetes two things go wrong. One, your pancreas
becomes less responsive to making and releasing insulin;
and two, cells throughout your body start to ignore the
insulin that is released. Since insulin is important in so
many different body functions, this becomes a serious
problem.
The findings in the new study revolve around another role
of insulin in the brain. The researchers discovered that
dopamine activity in a part of the brain that promotes
feelings of pleasure and reward are dependent upon insulin.
In my opinion, this has a couple of far reaching
implications.
Does insulin promote addiction?
The research suggests that diabetics, who lack the ability
to produce insulin, will have a more difficult time feeling
joy and pleasure because the brain circuits that control
these feelings will be less active. This may be one link
between the co-occurrences of type II diabetes and
depression.
From a scientific perspective, this is a very interesting
finding. But from a health perspective how does it help us
prevent these diseases in the first place? This is where
the next implication comes in.
The new research suggests that rises in insulin might boost
the activity of pleasure and reward centers, the same ones
that are stimulated by addictive drugs like amphetamine and
cocaine.
When does your insulin go up? It goes up after a high sugar
meal. What does this mean? It means that high sugar meals
might stimulate addictive centers in the brain.
I’ve been touting the benefits of feeding yourself
and your kids low-glycemic (essentially low sugar) meals
for some time. This new research adds fuel to that argument
by suggesting that sugar might actually be addictive. Maybe
not in the same sense that elicit drugs are addictive, but
that they have some degree of addictive tendencies
themselves.
The irony is that eating high-glycemic meals actually makes
you feel good in the short-term by increasing insulin and
boosting activity of your brain’s pleasure centers.
But after years of eating sugar your pancreas will
eventually burn out and lead to type II diabetes and
possibly depression, leaving you with the opposite feelings
that you ate the sugar for in the first place.
The take home message?
Get the high sugar cereals and other foods out of your
house. Don’t set yourself and your kids up for a
lifetime of battling the cravings for these disease
promoting foods.
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