Can Carrots Reduce The Risk Of Diabetes?

Specialists from USA in the latest study found that beta-carotene, found in large quantities in carrots, can reduce the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.

Thus, vegetables should be included in your diet to all those who seek to avoid the risk of the disease. Scientists advise them to limit in the diet of vitamin E, one form of which may be harmful in terms of the risk of developing diabetes. Thus, a substance known as gamma-tocopherol, the major form of vitamin E contained in a large number of products, including vegetable, as it turned out in the tests, can increase the risk of developing the disease.

Scientists have traced the interaction between gene variants associated with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and the level contained in the blood of different vitamins. Researchers have pinpointed the inverse relationship between the level of beta-carotene and the risk of type 2 diabetes.

"From Type 2 diabetes affects about 15% of the world population, and the number is growing," said Atul Butte, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine, Faculty of Pediatrics, Stanford University. "Health authorities estimate that one third of children born in the United States since 2000, faced with the disease at some point in their lives."

Butt is the principal author of a new study published online in Human Genetics. The results will be very important in further experiments. At this stage, scientists are not completely sure whether beta-carotene and gamma-tocopherol is beneficial or harmful in themselves, or they act as "markers" of the processes occurring in the body, while the other substances that have, that are unknown, and are true factors of the disease.

Interestingly, the beta-carotene and gamma-tocopherol interact with the same gene variant that influences the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, although through different mechanisms. It is believed that the risk of diabetes is largely due to a gene variant SLC30A4, which determines the degree of insulin secretion.

Approximately 50 - 60% of the American population have 2 variants of this gene, which has been shown, carries an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In this case, beta-carotene is able to inhibit the expression of this gene, while gamma-tocopherol, on the contrary, stimulates expression.