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The study by James Gangwisch and colleagues in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Centre (CUMC) looked at the dietary glycemic index, glycemic load, types of carbohydrates consumed, and depression in data from more than 70,000 postmenopausal women who participated in the US National Institutes of Health's Women's Health Initiative Observational Study between 1994 and 1998. Scientists said that while carbohydrates consumption normally increases blood sugar levels, eating highly refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, rice and junk food, triggers a hormonal response that affects the glycemic index. This then exacerbates changes in a woman's mood and triggers...

I’ve been saying for ages that the sugar composition of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is no different from that of table sugar (sucrose). Oops. A new study in the journal, Obesity, actually measured the amounts and kinds of sugars in 23 kinds of HFCS-sweetened drinks. The findings are summarized in a fact sheet: • The sugar content varied widely from amounts stated on labels. • Some drinks had 15% less sugar than labeled, but others had as much as 30% more. • On average, the drinks had 18% more fructose than expected. • Several brands of sodas seemed to...

Eating your daily calories within a consistent window of 8-10 hours is a powerful strategy to prevent and manage chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, according to a new manuscript published in the Endocrine Society's journal, Endocrine Reviews. Time-restricted eating is a type of intermittent fasting that limits your food intake to a certain number of hours each day. Intermittent fasting is one of the most popular diet trends, and people are using it to lose weight, improve their health and simplify their lifestyles. "People who are trying to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle should pay...

A popular class of diabetes medications called GLP-1R agonists (Trulicity and Rybelsus) may also protect against glaucoma in diabetic patients, according to a new study led by researchers in the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. The findings were published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. The researchers looked at retrospective data of 1,961 diabetic patients who were new users of this class of drugs and matched them to 4,371 unexposed control subjects. After 150 days on average, 10 patients in the medicated group were newly diagnosed with glaucoma (0.5 percent) compared to 58...

Can a person be "cured" of Type 2 Diabetes? Dr. Sarah Hallberg provides compelling evidence that it can, and the solution is simpler than you might think. Dr. Sarah Hallberg is the Medical Director of the Medically Supervised Weight Loss Program at IU Health Arnett, a program she created. She is board certified in both obesity medicine and internal medicine and has a Master’s Degree in Exercise Physiology. She has recently created what is only the second non-surgical weight loss rotation in the country for medical students. Her program has consistently exceeded national benchmarks for weight loss, and has been...

In the second half of the 20th century, conventional wisdom in the medical community held that overconsumption of saturated fats — the kind found in milk, cheese, meats and butter — was dangerous. And so, between 1968 and 1973, a well-planned, well-executed study involving more than 9,000 patients was performed to test this widely accepted relationship between diet and heart disease. The results of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment were notable for two reasons. First, the findings contradicted much of what was believed at the time: The study demonstrated that people who ate a diet rich in saturated fats did not...

Once reputed to be effective for killing werewolves, modern day silver bullets are seemingly magical solutions to complex problems. However, most of the time you see “silver bullet” in print it is in the negative as “XYZ is not a silver bullet against [fill in the blank].” And, in a double irony, according to tests run by ballistics experts, silver bullets aren’t even silver bullets. They tend to travel slower, with inferior target penetration, and are less accurate than conventional lead projectiles. That’s why I had to smile at the recent headline from MedPageToday—”OmniCarb Study: Cutting Carbs No Silver Bullet.”...

Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine reported today that the cause of obesity and insulin resistance may be tied to the fructose your body makes in addition to the fructose you eat. In recent years the role of added sweeteners, such as high fructose corn syrup and table sugar (sucrose), has taken center stage as risk factors for obesity and insulin resistance. Numerous studies suggest that the risk from added sugars may be due to the fructose content. But in the study published in the Sept. 10 edition of Nature Communications, the team led by researchers at...

Play CBS News Video People may joke they're addicted to desserts, but new brain imaging research shows there may be some truth to the statement.Researchers have found eating highly-processed carbohydrates like cakes, cookies and chips could affect pleasure centers in the brain, leading to serious cravings that might cause people to overeat.13 PhotosAre you a food addict? Take our online test "Beyond reward and craving, this part of the brain is also linked to substance abuse and dependence, which raises the question as to whether certain foods might be addictive," study author Dr. David Ludwig, director of the New...

One in four people born today are expected to develop Type 2 diabetes during their lifetimes. Shedding excess weight and exercising more can cut Type 2 diabetes risk by 58 percent. Favoring foods in their unrefined state -- brown rice and whole grains, for instance -- can help keep blood sugar levels from spiking. Exercise improves blood sugar control by increasing insulin sensitivity. As rates of Type 2 diabetes continue to rise around the world, experts say we mostly have ourselves to blame. Genes certainly play a role in determining risk. But the surge of new cases of this debilitating...

The widely prescribed diabetes drug Avandia is linked to a greater risk of heart attack and possibly death, a new scientific analysis revealed, and the U.S. government issued a safety alert Monday. The Food and Drug Administration urged diabetics taking the pill to talk to their doctors, but stopped short of forcing a sharper warning label on the drug sold by GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) of London. More than 6 million people worldwide have taken the drug since it came on the market eight years ago. Pooled results of dozens of studies revealed a 43 percent higher risk of heart attack,...