Lipid metabolism is your body's way of using a broad array of substances such as fat and cholesterol for several important cellular functions. Diabetes is linked to problems with lipid metabolism because the hormone insulin is involved in starting the lipid metabolism process. Diabetics have trouble with producing or effectively using insulin. You can control some of the risk factors for developing Type 2 diabetes by controlling your weight and keeping your cholesterol level in check.
Diabetes in the United States
Diabetes is a group of diseases marked by problems with your body's insulin. It can cause serious complications, from heart disease and blindness to amputations and kidney failure. Type 2 diabetes, a condition in which your body fails to use insulin properly, is growing at epidemic rates in the United States. More than 90 percent of diabetes diagnoses are for this type, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's also becoming increasingly common among children, even though aging was once a big risk factor. Also alarming is that Type 2 diabetes rates are closely connected to increasing incidence of obesity and related metabolic disorders, some of which are largely preventable.
Lipid Metabolism
Lipids are a group of substances, such as fatty acids, good and bad cholesterol, triglycerides, ketones and bile, that your body uses for a number of purposes. For example, some fatty acids can be used as or stored for energy. Other lipids help build cell membranes. Lipids are involved in activities such as signaling hormones and facilitating communication between different types of cells. Lipid metabolism is a complex process of taking lipids from your liver, and from foods you eat, digesting and breaking them down and delivering them throughout your body for their various functions. Lipid metabolism is closely related to carbohydrate metabolism, given that excess carbs can be stored as fat, says Physiologic Reviews. Diabetes can impair both lipid and carb metabolism.
The Insulin Factor
Researchers at Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center say insulin has a role in how your body metabolizes lipids. Any breakdown in that regulation puts you at increased risk of metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of disorders associated with Type 2 diabetes and obesity. People with metabolic syndrome tend to have a high level of lipids and glucose circulating in their bloodstream. Almost a quarter of all American adults have metabolic syndrome, and many of them are diagnosed with diabetes. Insulin, produced in your pancreas, acts on the liver, which produces both blood sugar and lipids. When everything goes right, insulin recruits enzymes that tell the liver to produce lipids that circulate throughout your body, shuffling along fatty acids, cholesterol -- the beneficial and bad kind -- and triglycerides. When your insulin is impaired by diabetes or you have a problem with the enzymes it uses, you get a buildup of these blood lipids. This buildup is dangerous; it can cause heart disease.
Lipid Metabolism Disorders
Some people inherit genetic disorders that prevent the appropriate enzymes that activate lipid metabolism from working. This defect causes illnesses such as Gaucher's disease, Tay-Sachs and Niemann-Pick. Overeating, especially high-fat, high-cholesterol and other unhealthy foods, along with weight gain can increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes, which also causes problems with lipid metabolism. People with diabetes get heart disease at twice the rate as people without diabetes. "Science Daily" reports on research that gives a clue as to why that's the case. Scientists theorize that diabetics lose an important lipid that generates energy for the heart. Blood sugar is the body's preferred energy source, but when diabetes interferes with that, diabetic hearts tend to run on fat. This change causes malfunctions that disrupt the energy supply to cells in the heart.
References
- Joslin Diabetes Center: Joslin Diabetes Center-Led Study Shows Different Insulin Signaling Components Control Glucose and Lipid Metabolism in the Liver
- "Physiologic Reviews" ; Disordered Lipid Metabolism and the Pathogenesis of Insulin Resistance; Savage et al.; 2007
- American Oil Chemists' Society: What Lipids Do
- Science Daily: Abnormal Fat Metabolism Underlies Heart Problems In Diabetic Patients
- CDC: National Diabetes Fact Sheet, 2007
- MerckManuals.com: Disorders of Lipid Metabolism
