The September Potpourri

Red wine improves insulin sensitivity

 Is there anything that red wine can’t do? A Spanish study shows that men who are at risk of developing heart disease who drink a glass of red wine daily—regular or dealcoholized—enjoy lower insulin resistance than men who consume gin.

Researchers at the universities of Barcelona and Valencia tracked 67 men at risk for cardiovascular disease and randomly assigned them daily amounts of either red wine, dealcoholized red wine, or gin over a four-week period.

When the study concluded, researchers found that the red wine group had decreases in insulin resistance ranging from 22 percent to 30 percent, versus 14 percent to 22 percent in the gin control group. 

No firm conclusions yet on why red wine works to reduce insulin resistance, although the Spanish scientists suspect that ethanol and polypehnols in the wine have some effect. One polyphrenol, resveratrol, has already been a subject of speculation because of its link to lower incidences of heart disease and obesity in red wine drinkers.

Can bacon be next?

Now there’s an Apple app that can help you decide if you want weight-loss surgery!

This was probably inevitable: a free iPod and iPad app that can help you decide whether gastric bypass surgery is something you want to do.

The app, called Get~2~Goal, was developed by Bucknell University and the Obesity Institute at Geisinger Health System. It’s aimed primarily at people who have undergone the surgery and want to be to compare their post-op progress to thousands of others who’ve undergone the procedure.

But it also allows pre-op users to understand what are reasonable weight loss and life change expectations for the procedure, based on statistics derived from 150,000 U.S. gastric bypass surgeries. By entering their own height, weight, age and other measurements, they can see how people like them fared after having bypass surgery.

Go here for a press release on the app.

Where to look if you’d like to be a diabetes study patient

 Not everybody is qualified to be a diabetes study patient, but you might want to look into becoming one.

Benefits from study participation include routine checkups and often free regular diabetes medications such as metformin and sulfonylureas. If you don’t wind up on a placebo, benefits from the experimental drug you’re on might include weight loss, better appetite control, and, of course, lowered A1cs.

Here are some places to check:

• Check with your HMO to see if it has any studies underway or can refer you to one.
• Check with your personal physician or endocrinologist for available studies.
• Check out the clinical trials websites of the organizations below:
  • ClinicalTrials.gov is the federal source for clinical trial information nationwide
  • JDRF
  • Medical News Today maintains an updated list of trials
  • Clinical Connection
  • Mayo Clinic

Doing a Google search for “diabetes clinical trials” and including your region (for example, “Baltimore,” “western Pennsylvania,” “Orange County,” etc.) can also turn up results.