Separating salt and sugar to limit diabetes
Sugaris the bête noire of diabetics. Many people with diabetes banish sugar from their diet. But salt in all this, do we think about it? And can the mechanism of a bypass help remedy the disease?
Researchers at INSERM (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) first looked at the effects of gastric bypass (surgery to reduce the size of the stomach, usually performed in obese people, click here to learn more) on diabetic pathology. For this, they carried out tests on volunteers and noticed that after this intervention, sugar, normally ingested throughout the intestine in contact with bile, was in these casesonly ingested in the lower part of the intestine. This thus limits the absorption of sugar in the body.
But why this phenomenon? To explain this, they then performed the same tests on miniature pigs, these animals having practically the same anatomy and digestive physiology as humans. So they made the animals undergo a bypass and studied the consequences. Here too, sugar absorption has been reduced. But even more surprising, the absorption of sugar in the upper part of the intestine was renewed after adding salt to the meals of the operated pigs. Yes, salt. This would therefore cause an increase in blood sugar in the body, and therefore play a role in the absorption of glucose.
The researchers of this study, whose results were recently published in the journal Cell Metabolism(1), insist on the fact that sugar would not be the only one involved in the condition of diabetics. Of course, hygiene-dietary rules such as weight loss and eating less help fight diabetes. But also the limitation of the simultaneous absorption of sugar and salt, the latter therefore promoting an increase in blood sugar.
This study shows that diabetes prevention does not only involve limiting your consumption of sugary foods, but that salt is definitely bad for your health. These results could therefore lead to newways of preventingthe global scourge of diabetes, and thus lead to the discovery of new molecules that can create drugs capable of selectively cancelling the action of salt and sugar on the intestines.
Stephen Paul is the lead author and founder of My Health Sponsor. Holder of a diploma in health and well-being coaching with more than 200 articles in the field of health, he makes it a point of honor to offer advice based on reliable information, based on scientific research, and verified by health professionals.