BMI, Metabolic Syndrome, And Pancreatic Cancer

Here is study linking higher BMI, and higher fasting insulin levels (metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance), with an increased risk for pancreatic cancer.  The burden of morbidity and mortality caused by overweight/obesity is staggering, something to keep in mind when reading all the popular stories on the Internet that attempt to normalize obesity and rant about “fat shaming” and “body shaming.”  Being overweight is literally killing people, why normalize it?  Abstract:

BACKGROUND:

Risk factors for pancreatic cancer include a cluster of metabolic conditions such as obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes. Given that these risk factors are correlated, separating out causal from confounded effects is challenging. Mendelian randomization (MR), or the use of genetic instrumental variables, may facilitate the identification of the metabolic drivers of pancreatic cancer.

METHODS:

We identified genetic instruments for obesity, body shape, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes in order to evaluate their causal role in pancreatic cancer etiology. These instruments were analyzed in relation to risk using a likelihood-based MR approach within a series of 7110 pancreatic cancer patients and 7264 control subjects using genome-wide data from the Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium (PanScan) and the Pancreatic Cancer Case-Control Consortium (PanC4). Potential unknown pleiotropic effects were assessed using a weighted median approach and MR-Egger sensitivity analyses.

RESULTS:

Results indicated a robust causal association of increasing body mass index (BMI) with pancreatic cancer risk (odds ratio [OR] = 1.34, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.09 to 1.65, for each standard deviation increase in BMI [4.6 kg/m2]). There was also evidence that genetically increased fasting insulin levels were causally associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer (OR = 1.66, 95% CI = 1.05 to 2.63, per SD [44.4 pmol/L]). Notably, no evidence of a causal relationship was observed for type 2 diabetes, nor for dyslipidemia. Sensitivity analyses did not indicate that pleiotropy was an important source of bias.

CONCLUSIONS:

Our results suggest a causal role of BMI and fasting insulin in pancreatic cancer etiology.

Insulin Analogs And Breast Cancer Risk

By Bakerstmd - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39243250

Long-acting insulin analogs are used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.  Given the possible effects of such drugs on cell signaling pathways, the cancer risk needs to be ascertained.  It has been shown that the drug glargine leads to increased risk of breast cancer for women with type 2 diabetes. Assuming various confounding variables were accounted for, this is a serious issue, and drug side effects always need to be considered when planning treatment.  Abstract:

Purpose The association between long-acting insulin analogs and increased breast cancer risk is uncertain, particularly with the short follow-up in previous studies. We assessed this risk long term in women with type 2 diabetes. Methods A population-based cohort of women 40 years or older, all of whom were treated with long-acting (glargine, detemir) or neutral protamine Hagedorn (NPH) insulin between 2002 and 2012, was formed using the United Kingdom's Clinical Practice Research Datalink. Women were followed until February 2015 or breast cancer diagnosis. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs of incident breast cancer, comparing long-acting insulin analogs with NPH overall, as well as by duration and cumulative dose. Results The cohort included 22,395 women who received insulin treatment, with 321 incident breast cancer events occurring during up to 12 years of follow-up (incidence rate 3.3 per 1,000 person-years). Compared with NPH insulin, insulin glargine was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer (HR, 1.44; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.85), mainly increasing 5 years after glargine initiation (HR, 2.23; 95% CI, 1.32 to 3.77) and after > 30 prescriptions (HR, 2.29; 95% CI, 1.26 to 4.16). The risk was particularly elevated among prior insulin users (HR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.10 to 2.12) but not for new users, which included fewer patients and for which one cannot rule out an HR of 1.81. The risk associated with insulin detemir was not significantly elevated (HR, 1.17; 95% CI, 0.77 to 1.77). Conclusion Long-term use of insulin glargine is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in women with type 2 diabetes. The risk associated with insulin detemir remains uncertain because there are fewer users of this insulin.

Dementia in your 40s

Are you afraid of dementia? How about developing dementia in your 40s? You might be able to protect yourself ... by learning about the food for the brain.

By “food for the brain” I do not mean reading books and learning. True, challenging your brain is important based upon the “use it, or lose it” rule. However, in this post I am referring to the actual food you consume every day.

Do you eat lots of sugar? Have you been putting on pounds? Are you frequently tired? Are you moody most of the time? If you are not worried about your waistline and appearance, are you worried about succumbing to a dreadful illness due to your body weight?

Are you on the verge of being diagnosed with diabetes type 2? Or do you already have it? Do you have metabolic syndrome? Do you think that these conditions are not a problem because they could be controlled by medications?

I assure you that one body “malfunction” now would lead to another malfunction down the road, in your older years. If you escape cardiovascular diseases and cancer (both linked to overweight/obesity, metabolic syndrome, and insulin resistance), you may not be lucky to escape dementia associated with many different types of neurodegenerative diseases.

Both insulin resistance and diabetes are linked to several neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Here is a source for more information.

In some neurodegenerative diseases, glucose is not properly used in the brain, and this situation is reminiscent of diabetes and insulin resistance. In fact, Alzheimer’s disease is sometimes called “type 3 diabetes”. And here is the bombshell: not only we may witness our children develop cancer before us, but we may also have to take care of our children when they develop dementia in their 40s:

"At a time in history when type 2 diabetes is diagnosed in progressively younger adults, the [new] findings have important implications for age of Alzheimer’s disease — with symptoms that will be increasingly reported by adults in their 50s and even possibly even in their 40s.”


Actionable
Stop eating sugar, stop drinking anything with sugar or sweeteners. Learn to read nutrition labels and recognize all 50+ names of sugar. Get the excess weight down.

And yes, mental exercise helps too:
You know what they say, use it or lose it. For a healthy brain functions, do these as described here:
· Challenge yourself
· Be socially active
· Follow a healthy diet
· Be physically active
· Reduce stress
· Protect your head
· Make healthy lifestyle choices
· Do your brain a favour - volunteer!