Is diabetes a result of ice age?
By Sandra Blakeslee The New York Times
THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2005
When temperatures plummet, most people bundle up in thick sweaters, stay cozy indoors and stoke up on comfort food. But a provocative new theory suggests that thousands of years ago, juvenile diabetes may have evolved as a way to stay warm.
People with the disease, also known as Type 1 diabetes, have excessive amounts of sugar, or glucose, in their blood.
The theory argues that juvenile diabetes may have developed in ancestral people who lived in Northern Europe about 12,000 years ago when temperatures fell by 10 degrees Fahrenheit in a few decades and an ice age arrived.
Archaeological evidence suggests countless people froze to death, while others fled south. But Dr. Sharon Moalem, an expert in evolutionary medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, says she believes that some people may have adapted to the extreme cold.
High levels of blood glucose prevent cells and tissues from forming ice crystals, Moalem said. In other words, Type 1 diabetes would have prevented many of our ancestors from freezing to death...
Looks like it will work better for Liberals.
:^)
Brilliant theory. people went into a diabetic coma and survived the ice age... These people get paid?