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Participants who ate at least five servings of chocolate weekly had a 10% reduced risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D), with dark chocolate showing an even stronger effect—a 21% lower risk. In contrast, milk chocolate consumption was linked to long-term weight gain, which may contribute to T2D, but not to a reduced risk of the disease. Researchers emphasized the health benefits of choosing dark chocolate over milk chocolate and cautioned that these findings may not apply to individuals with very high chocolate consumption. Dark chocolate consumption may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes by 21%, while milk chocolate does...

Night owls have a higher BMI, larger waists, more hidden body fat and are almost 50% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes (T2D) than those who go to bed earlier, shows new research. To find out more, Dr. van der Velde and colleagues studied the association between sleep timing, T2D and body fat distribution in more than 5,000 individuals. The analysis involved participants with a mean age of 56 years and mean BMI of 30 kg/m2. The participants were then divided into three groups: early chronotype, late chronotype and intermediate chronotype. The participants were followed-up for a median of...

Most U.S. adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) meet recommended criteria for use of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) and sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2is), but fewer than 10 percent use either of them, according to a research letter. Shichao Tang, Ph.D. and colleagues used nationally representative data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to examine the number and percentage of persons with T2D who met the recommended criteria for and were using GLP-1 RAs and SGLT2is. The researchers estimated that 22.4 million U.S. adults with diagnosed T2D (82.3 percent) per year would meet the recommended criteria for...

How much water do we need to drink to stay healthy? Studies of hormones are providing diabetes researchers with new answers. Neurotensin and vasopressin are two of the hormones that are being studied by diabetes researchers. Neurotensin is released from the gastrointestinal tract after we have consumed fat. Research has shown that neurotensin can be used as a biomarker to predict the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease. "Studies have shown that there is an association between raised levels of the hormone after fat consumption and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular...

Research finds that shivering during repeated exposure to cold improves glucose tolerance, decreases fasting blood sugar and blood fat levels, and markedly reduces blood pressure in overweight and obese adults. The preliminary study highlights the potential for repeated cold exposure that activates shivering as an alternative strategy to treat and prevent type 2 diabetes (T2D). "When we are cold, we can activate our brown fat because it burns energy and releases heat to protect us. In addition, muscle can contract mechanically, or shivers, thereby generating heat. As there is considerably more muscle than brown fat in a human, shivering can...

Facebook... posts may be able to predict whether someone will develop diabetes and other conditions including depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, sexually-transmitted diseases, and drug abuse better than demographic information like age, sex, and race. People who often use the words “God” and “pray” in their Facebook posts are 15 times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than people who rarely use those terms on the platform, a new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine finds. Raina Merchant, the lead author of the study and the director of Penn Medicine’s Center for Digital Health, said she didn’t...