Oct 4, 2020
Researcher and physician
Yoshifumi Saisho is on a mission to change diabetes treatment in
his country. His research on the physiology of
type 2 diabetes in Japan versus the U.S.A. makes an exciting
case for his argument.
Listeners will be treated with an explanation of his model-shifting
findings and learn
Yoshifumi Saisho is a researcher
and physician with the Department of Internal Medicine at Keio
University School of Medicine in Tokyo. When he began his career,
he decided he wanted to be a doctor that would treat the entire
patient rather than just one part.
He also was focused on preventative aspects of disease. These two
motivators still dominate his work and he shares compelling
evidence about diabetes manifestation that centers on beta cells.
He says that pancreas tissue samples have shown that beta-cell mass
is reduced by around 50 percent in patients with
type 2 diabetes. Also significant, patients in Japan who
develop type 2 diabetes are not as obese as American diabetics but
both share this reduction in beta cells.
How does this happen and why
does it matter? Well, it's our beta cells that make insulin. He
explains his theory for why this lower beta-cell number happens.
When we eat excess carbs, he says, beta cells release insulin to
take care of it. Humans don't increase beta-cell numbers under
excess sugar, so each beta cell works harder to release more
insulin. Therefore, he thinks that these beta cells die off from
exhaustion and overwork. Preservation of beta cells must be
important and this is why he'd like to change how the Japanese view
diabetes.
Japanese treatment for diabetes views it as a glucose-centered
problem but he argues that if health professionals shift to seeing
it as a beta-cell disease, treatment and prevention will be more
successful. He hopes to appeal to the concept of avoiding
wastefulness. We need to apply conservation language to our
physical body's resources as well, he adds, and utilize
nutrition and fitness facts as tools for reducing beta-cell
workload. In other words, beta cells are a limited and precious
resource in our body.
For more about Yoshifumi
Saisho's work, he suggests googling his name.
Here are Yoshifumi Saisho's recent two papers and the website for
ResearchGate for more information.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14656566.2020.1776262
https://www.emjreviews.com/diabetes/article/editors-pick-how-can-we-develop-more-effective-strategies-for-type-2-diabetes-mellitus-prevention-a-paradigm-shift-from-a-glucose-centric-to-a-beta-cell-centric-concept-of-diabetes/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yoshifumi_Saisho
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK