Dr. Jarold Olefsky
“Obesity without inflammation does not lead to insulin resistance.”
Inflammation plays a key role in some diseases, including type II diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, which are called metabolic syndrome. Dr. Steve Shelson – professor of medicine at Harvard Medical University – focused his attention on inflammation. Epidemiologists have found that patients with type II diabetes and cardiovascular diseases have slightly elevated levels of inflammatory markers in the blood, indicating a possible link between inflammation and the development of these diseases. In experimental models, it was revealed that pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor of alpha (TNF-a) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) contribute to the formation of insulin resistance.
Inflammation is well studied by immunologists: after infection, various immune cells enter the area of infection in the body to fight it. Nevertheless, Dr. Shelson claims that patients with metabolic diseases have other situations: the same markers of the immune response are involved, but their concentration is constantly at a low level, instead of significantly increasing in the case of a typical infectious process, and then decreasing to normal.
It’s simple: with the normalization of weight, the risk of developing inflammatory processes and diseases is significantly reduced.
