Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Poultry Recipes: Not just for the 5 Day Pouch Test
Mary Mary where are you kitties?
The fattest cat I ever did see. My lovely baby Mary is so ready for these kittens now... but she is still hanging onto them! The photo doesn't really catch her best side, but its like someone inflated a balloon in there!
She has chosen the most random of places to recline. she is pictured here sprawled on the bathroom floor right under the sink. Nothing like convenience for you. She waddles from the bathroom sleeping place to the landing sleeping place. However, today, as I was making the beds, I did catch her in the little box we made for her though... So we are STILL playing the waiting game. I really want to see those 'nit-nits' so bad now! Its so exciting - what will they be, how many, what colours etc...
Diet wise... Nothing exciting to report. Went to fat fighters (aka slimmingworld) yesterday. I weighed in at 15 stone 12. No surprises there then. What was great though, was the fact that practically all the same old people were there. A couple had got drastically slimmer, and another couple fatter. But they ALL commented on how I was looking and were like "Oh! Hello... wow, like the hair... seems to be a lot less of you too!" Which I wasn't expecting, so that was a really lovely boost to my day.
Foodwise today has not been fabulous. I crunched up 5 peanut m&m's and then had to puke them up again. then for lunch I made a jacket potato with curry sauce. Eat a bit then puked it and chucked the rest away. For dinner I made waffles, beans and egg. I eat 3/4 waffle, 1 egg and a few beans... VERY slowly. So far, no spew.
This seems to becoming a habit for me. Every day last week has been dreadful in the mornings and afternoons, but ok come the evening.
On the home front, Maria and Xandra left today. They told us on Friday that they had found a job in a holiday camp on the seaside, so I took them to the station this morning. I really hope they get on ok... I know these places are sometimes a bit hard to pin down on the payment side of things... That said, so is DH's new boss. We should have been paid last Friday 25th. Then he said he got tied up, so he would see us yesterday. Didn't happen. He said he would meet up Wednesday, but I told DH that unfortunately that was NOT OK, and he rang him and he said he would come over today. Still waiting. How can you work for someone for a whole month and then not pay them??? This is seriously doing my head in. The mortgage comes out tomorrow. Thankfully his redundancy covers it, but next month... Hard to trust someone who never does what they say they do.
So I am stressing just a TINY BIT!
Review: The Neighborhood Cookbook
Monday, April 28, 2008
More Liver
One of the liver's most important overall functions is maintaining nutrient homeostasis. It controls the blood level of a number of macro- and micronutrients, and attempts to keep them all at optimal levels.
Here's a list of some of the liver's functions I'm aware of:
- Buffers blood glucose by taking it up or releasing it when needed
- A major storage site for glycogen (a glucose polymer)
- Clears insulin from the blood
- Synthesizes triglycerides
- Secretes and absorbs lipoprotein particles ("cholesterol")
- Stores important vitamins: B12, folate, A, D, E, K (that's why it's so nutritious to eat!)
- Stores minerals: copper and iron
- Detoxifies the blood
- Produces ketone bodies when glucose is running low
- Secretes blood proteins
- Secretes bile
- Converts thyroid hormones
- Converts vitamin D (D3 --> 25(OH)D3)
The Liver: Your Metabolic Gatekeeper
I read a paper today from the lab of C. Ronald Kahn that really drove home the point. They created a liver-specific insulin receptor knockout (LIRKO) mouse, which is a model of severe insulin resistance in the liver. The mouse ends up developing severe whole-body insulin resistance, dramatically elevated post-meal insulin levels (20-fold!), impaired glucose tolerance, and elevated post-meal and fasting glucose. Keep in mind that this all resulted from nothing more than an insulin resistant liver.
LIRKO mice had elevated post-meal blood glucose due to the liver's unresponsiveness to insulin's command to take up sugar. Apparently the liver can dispose of one third of the glucose from a meal, turning it into glycogen and triglycerides. The elevated fasting glucose was caused by insulin not suppressing gluconeogenesis (glucose synthesis) by the liver. In other words, the liver has no way to know that there's already enough glucose in the blood so it keeps on pumping it out. This is highly relevant to diabetics because fasting hyperglycemia comes mostly from increased glucose output by the liver. This can be due to liver insulin resistance or insufficient insulin production by the pancreas.
One of the interesting things about LIRKO mice is their dramatically elevated insulin level. Their pancreases are enlarged and swollen with insulin. It's as if the pancreas is screaming at the body to pick up the slack and take up the post-meal glucose the liver isn't disposing of. The elevated insulin isn't just due to increased output by the pancreas, however. It's also due to decreased disposal by the liver. According to the paper, the liver is responsible for 75% of insulin clearance from the blood in mice. The hyperinsulinemia they observed was both due to increased secretion and decreased clearance. Interestingly, they noted no decline in beta cell (the cells that secrete insulin) function even under such a high load.
Something that's interesting to note about these mice is they have very low blood triglyceride. It makes sense since insulin is what tells the liver to produce it. Could this have something to do with their lack of beta cell dysfunction?
The really strange thing about LIRKO mice is that their blood glucose becomes more normal with age. Strange until you see the reason: their livers are degenerating so they can't keep up glucose production!
LIRKO mice reproduce many of the characteristics of type II diabetes, without degenerating completely into beta cell death. So insulin resistance in the liver appears to reproduce some elements of diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, but the full-blown disorders require other tissues as well. As a side note, this group also has a skeletal muscle-specific insulin receptor knockout which is basically normal. Interesting considering muscle tissue seems to be one of the first tissues to become insulin resistant during diabetes onset.
So if you want to end up like your good pal LIRKO, remember to drink high-fructose corn syrup with every meal! You'll have fatty liver and insulin resistance in no time!
I have a lot more to say about the liver, but I'll continue it in another post.
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