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2nd May 2018, 01:30 PM | #1 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Evolutionary advantage of Type 2 Diabetes?
T2D is such a common genetic disease there must be an advantage to it, or it would have been eliminated from the gene pool.
My theory is that it is not just "thrifty genes", but another system all together. Seems the disease is only superficially the high blood sugar called Diabetes. The real root is "insulin resistance", where in your cells do not accept insulin the way they ought to. So your sugars go high, as in after a meal, for everybody including healthy subjects. At which point your pancreas puts out enough insulin to lower sugars. Meantime, you have perhaps ten times the circulating insulin level. Eventually the pancreas reaches it's limit, and your sugars stay high- diagnosed as Diabetes. Those high levels of insulin act as- get this- 'Insulin like Growth Factor' ! (Who would have thought that insulin can act like an insulin-like compound? ) That IGF is what the body builders and wrestler use, called 'steroids'. So, my theory is that those of us with the T2D gene can grow larger and stronger, and that is the evolutionary advantage that has kept the T2D in the gene pool. Go ahead and google <pseudo acromegaly> See why diabetics have more carpal tunnel, trigger fingers, blown discs, tendinopathy, bone spurs, arthritis, cardiomyopathy, enlarged hearts, ... all the symptoms of Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, and soon, Arnold Schwarzenegger.... |
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2nd May 2018, 01:38 PM | #2 |
Penultimate Amazing
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It doesn't have to be advantageous, just not disadvantageous enough to stop you passing on your genes. Until very recently, type 2 diabetes tended to strike at an age where breeding was long past.
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2nd May 2018, 01:48 PM | #3 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Location: Canada, eh?
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2nd May 2018, 03:15 PM | #4 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Ooops, I meant to put this thread in SMMT, but my stiff numb fingers (see above) hit the wrong keys.
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2nd May 2018, 03:20 PM | #5 |
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2nd May 2018, 03:31 PM | #6 |
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Some comprehensive information.
Type 2 diabetes
Quote:
Primary care-led weight management for remission of type 2 diabetes (DiRECT): an open-label, cluster-randomised trial
Quote:
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2nd May 2018, 03:58 PM | #7 |
Penultimate Amazing
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You may be drastically underestimating the time scales on which evolution operates. H. Sapiens hasn't really been around long enough for us to be confident about the evolutionary implications of its traits and mutations.
Type 2 diabetes could easily be irrelevant to the evolution of the species, in the sense of not affecting the actual evolutionary path of the species. This is additionally confounded by human ability to counteract or ignore evolutionary pressures and effects. |
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2nd May 2018, 04:45 PM | #8 |
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Indeed.. For instance, males with other than the most spectacular tail feathers, still manage to breed.
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2nd May 2018, 06:17 PM | #9 |
Penultimate Amazing
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'
Humans do have PLENTY of evolutionary traits. Many of which have proven implications- sickle cell disease protecting again malaria frinstance. And sickle cell is not world wide, only in Africans. Proof that traits do not need to be universal to be advantageous. I never thought EVERYBODY is T2, only that there is a reason it hasn't died out. Similar to sickle cell. In evolution, advantages only need to offset disadvantages to keep the gene alive. Which was my premise, that since T2 is extant, there must be some advantage. But nowadays, with ED meds for males, and HRT for woman, things may shift, eh? Towards, or away from my hypothesis? |
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2nd May 2018, 08:01 PM | #10 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Could you expand on your phrase "Insulin like Growth Factor"?
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2nd May 2018, 08:32 PM | #11 |
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There's no advantage, and it's really not a genetic disease. It's generally a result of lifestyle choices. Over 90% of diabetics are type 2, and it's rare to see in someone who isn't overweight or obese.
As others have said, evolution is messy, and traits are not selected for or against if they get passed on via breeding before they manifest. It's only been an issue recently, as type 2 has become much more common in places with abundant food supplies, where people eat themselves into it, as well as all over the other issues that come with obesity. |
2nd May 2018, 08:39 PM | #12 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The way the growth hormone system works is that the Pituitary gland puts out Growth Hormone. That hormone only effects the liver, where it triggers the output of the active hormone, Insulin Like Growth Factor, IGF for short. IGF-1 is made only by infants. Igf-2 is what adults make, so we can drop the -2. Body builders use an artificial analog, hundreds of time stronger than the natural kind.
The IGF molecule is similar to Insulin. So when insulin is in great enough concentration it can have the same growth effects on the body. The disease Acromegaly is caused by an excess of IGF. Which is usually caused by too much growth hormone excreted by the Pituitary. Usual cause is a tumor of the Pituitary that puts out the GH. Giantism is the same thing, except the tumor happens at an earlier age, while the bones can still grow in length, so the victim grow as much as eight feet tall. I have a lean body mass of over 220 lbs, and 40 of the 50 symptoms of Acromegaly, yet low IGF. Hmmm, why did I get so big? I talked the docs into doing a brain scan, looking for a tumor. While waiting for the results, I wonder if there was such a thing as "pseudo Acromegaly"? That is when I found the tie to Insulin Resistance. And I have been wondering ever since why T2 hasn't died out of the gene pool... there must be some advantage to it.... I even compiled a list of my symptoms that are also a list of Acromegaly: skin tags, colon polyps, heart murmur, artery disease, trigger fingers, carpal tunnel, ruptured discs, vetebral scalloping, bone spurs, tendonitis, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, enlarged liver, ad on to 45 items. Oddest one was "pseudo foramin" of a thumb, looked like I drilled a hole through my thumb bone. Cause is bone overgrowth. |
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2nd May 2018, 08:53 PM | #13 |
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2nd May 2018, 09:21 PM | #14 |
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3rd May 2018, 05:43 AM | #15 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Cart/horse? With all of those soft tissue problems, is it any wonder I don't feel like running a marathin? I did do much better when gobbling Ibuprofen, but kidney limitations took that off the table. And I think I left kidney disease off the list .Nah, it's a result of a genetic variation. Genes is why so few people manage to actually lose weight, and even fewer can keep it off. And see post 6 above, after a whole year only half of the subjects managed to get off the meds.
Also same post link, 150 genes related to diabetes, doesn't matter. It's not quantity, it's quality. Hmmm, I wonder which genes the two groups had? Controlled w/ d&e, not controllable with d&e? The data could show a uselessness to your advise for half the patients? Genes effect EVERYTHING- mood, intellect, size,endurance, strength, digestion, libido,even whether we like rutabagas. Problem is that at this point science has picked all the low hanging fruit- the one-to-ones of genotype<->phenotype. Next it needs to figure out which combination of several of those 150 genetic variants cause YOUR diabetes. There are some 1:1 genetic probs related to diabetes, like defects in the insulin receptor. But much of the resistance is caused by variations of metabolic defects. Say, a defect in a gene for making COQ10. Then your body can't burn fats, they build up in your cells, causing not only poor endurance, bur the fats get in the way, clogging your insulin receptors. "If you think you understand metabolism, you missed something." That COQ10 gene is named COQ2, I am homozygous for a defect there. Treatable with COQ10 supplements, a gram per day. That gene is in 11% of the population. (I bet it is one of the 150 cited) Many other defects are about that percentage. Having two such defects makes you 1/100, three 1/1,000. four 1/10,000. We each have 40 million to pick 4 from. We are all unique, baby. Our treatment can not be "one size fits all". |
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3rd May 2018, 07:10 AM | #16 |
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So this, then, is the real-world counterpart to the XMen. How very depressing!
Although look at the bright side : people can now go prancing around in skin-tight costumes, with a large “D” emblazoned on the garish T-shirts covering their shrunken chests. That spectacle (and, barring an actual spectacle, that thought) can give those of us who have no taste and no sense of empathy some cheap laughs. (Sorry, couldn’t help that! But you did start this under Community.) |
3rd May 2018, 07:14 AM | #17 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I think it is somewhat misleading to consider a trait such as T2D as either you have it or not, and given so many people (at least in the USA) have it there must have been an evolutionary selection for it. T2D is just one extreme result of the complex regulatory mechanisms that control energy metabolism in humans and other mammals. These regulatory mechanisms have been selected by evolution to produce the most appropriate physiology possible within each of a wide range of different diets, caloric intake, stress, environment (temperature, etc.) etc. And these mechanisms usually work quite well: one can eat three doughnuts one morning, have a salad for lunch, and an a 3000 calorie steak and potatoes dinner and still function in your job as a furniture mover reasonably well (at least you will not pass out). Or one can be a vegan, work in a library, and also get through a typical day. Or you can eat for, train for and run a marathon. Very different energy intakes and very different energy demands, yet the same molecular mechanisms do the best they can to keep you going and alive.
As noted up thread, most of human evolution was under a very different diet and life style than we now have in Western society. So the evolutionary selections on these regulatory mechanisms were in response to those circumstances: before agriculture probably cycles of feast (killed a wooly mammoth) and famine (can't catch another one). After agriculture the diet steadied a bit, but there were still more mild feasts (crop harvest) and famines (winter or, more severely, a failed crop). The current circumstances in Western society, of most people having access to as many calories as they wish and relatively modest physical effort requirements, causes the regulatory mechanisms to respond in the feast mode, but without the famines intervening. These circumstances, outside of the evolutionary pressure that programmed these mechanisms, result over time in negative outcomes such as T2D. So casbro is correct that evolution did select for the mechanisms that lead to T2D, but by selecting for mechanisms that were appropriate under very different circumstances and that now produce T2D as an error given the inputs (our current diets and life styles) lie outside the parameters for which the regulatory algorithms were designed. |
3rd May 2018, 07:17 AM | #18 |
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How's this for a convoluted explanation of sorts?
I've personally seen instances of people who, when diagnosed with diabetes, dramatically altered their lifestyle choices, so that their general health (and, I suppose, their general prospects for a longer life) actually improved as a result of the diagnosis. Mightn't that actually help in the evolutionary scheme of things? |
3rd May 2018, 07:19 AM | #19 |
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3rd May 2018, 07:23 AM | #20 |
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I don't know why anyone would think that a disease needs to confer an evolutionary advantage. In fact, to even look for such an advantage is misguided and a waste of time, particularly with a disease which typically occurs past breeding age. The whole premise of the thread is nuts.
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3rd May 2018, 07:31 AM | #21 |
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3rd May 2018, 07:40 AM | #22 |
Penultimate Amazing
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There MUST be an advantage to make up for the disadvantages or it would not have evolved to such ubiquitousness. "Thrifty gene" is the usual explanation, I have merely brought up an alternative or additional advantage.
But past breeding age is only pertinent for the one latter generation. How about being around to raise the grand kids, pass down knowledge, etc. There is more to evolution than ONE next generation. Besides, males don't become sterile with age. What was that old lion's name? So old he couldn't walk by himself, but a pair of lionesses would brace him up while he inseminated another? |
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3rd May 2018, 07:45 AM | #23 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Aside, re: 150 genes known to be related to diabetes: It's called a Gene Set, a group of gene SNPs that when combined have a particular outcome. The genes entailing the GS may not even be closely related. In this disease, some in metabolism and some in endocrine could do it.
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3rd May 2018, 07:50 AM | #24 |
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"The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place." The Don That's what we've sunk to here. |
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3rd May 2018, 08:07 AM | #25 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The key is reproductive success, considering that as far as we know most Type II diabetes seems associated with high carbohydrate diets and low levels of exercise, why would it have been selected out of the population in the past, prior to the 1970s?
Most people who develop Type II diabetes are capable of reproduction and many do reproduce, that is all that matters in evolution, a negative trait must impact reproduction and cause individuals to not reproduce. My mother did not develop Type II diabetes until 20 years after she had three children |
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3rd May 2018, 08:10 AM | #26 |
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It's a mutation. Beneficial in some environments, not so much in others. It's far too early in the evolutionary history of H. sapiens to tell if it has any real evolutionary advantage for the species. Over the next million years or so, it could very well get lost in the noise.
Not every transient trait in a species' genetic evolution is going to have an evolutionary significance. Not every transient trait needs to be assigned an evolutionary Just So Story.
Quote:
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3rd May 2018, 08:10 AM | #27 |
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I suspect you are a sandwich, metaphorically speaking. -Donn And a shot rang out. Now Space is doing time... -Ben Burch You built the toilet - don't complain when people crap in it. _Kid Eager Never underestimate the power of the Random Number God. More of evolutionary history is His doing than people think. - Dinwar |
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3rd May 2018, 08:29 AM | #28 |
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3rd May 2018, 08:30 AM | #29 |
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You won't answer this so I'll do it using your logic.
Of course there is an evolutionary advantage to not having T2D. If that weren't true then people without the disease would have been weeded out of the gene pool. So we have a situation. People with the disease have an evolutionary advantage, and people without the disease have an evolutionary advantage. Is that awesome, or what? |
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3rd May 2018, 08:30 AM | #30 |
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Are you just looking for a way to recast your disease as something positive?
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3rd May 2018, 08:40 AM | #31 |
Penultimate Amazing
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At least you do understand that there are genes for all of your examples.
And I didn't say that ALL diseases have a plus side, only that T2D might. Same way the sickle cell does. Hmm, thought exercise- Age Related Macular Degeneration, ARMD. Seems it can be eased or prevented with vitamin and protein supplements. Perhaps the gene causes those additives to be used to greater advantage elsewhere in the body? What if to make adrenaline? Upside, fright or flight to save your life, downside blindness in old age? ( I know there are several genes involved in ARMD,I have quite the likely hood from them) |
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3rd May 2018, 08:42 AM | #32 |
Penultimate Amazing
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As has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread.
Even if people were susceptible to type 2 diabetes, it's only relatively recently in evolutionary terms that we have enough of a calorie surplus for people to go on and develop in in any appreciable numbers. Then there's the question of whether it strikes early enough to have an impact on breeding success. If I've already passed on my genes successfully at 25, it really doesn't matter that much whether I get sick at 55 from an evolutionary perspective. The treatment of type 2 diabetes through diet and exercise is so very recent that it cannot have had an evolutionary effect in any case. |
3rd May 2018, 08:59 AM | #33 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I know that, and I don't need to post here to know it. But sharing my thoughts just might lead to a deeper understanding of the disease by others. Frinstance, diet and exercise ARE THE BEST TREATMENT. Because taking insulin only exacerbates the pseudo-acromegaly.
But the basic point is that Diabetes is a genetic disease, you can't 'catch' it from your diet, you need the genes. And that it is very difficult to control w/ d&e, if you have the particular gene set. Think of it as the Voracious Appetite Gene. Diet and exercise won't change your eye color either. I wonder if there's been a long term study of soft tissue diseases in diabetics who take Metformin? It lowers sugars via a different mechanism, but probably does not change insulin resistance. Hmm speaking of metformin, it lowers sugars by cutting down on the liver's production of sugars. THAT is not treated by diet and exercise, looks like that venue may be the reason for only 50% efficacy in the study mentioned up-thread? |
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3rd May 2018, 09:06 AM | #34 |
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In the same way as dodgy knees and back are genetic, decreasing athletic performance with age is genetic, hair greying with age is genetic, hearing deterioration with age is genetic. What you are doing is delusional: you are trying to delude yourself and anyone who falls for it that there is a positive evolutionary reason for the disease which people have inflicted on themselves pretty much only in the last 50 or 60 years. There isn't.
There's a reason I chose them. |
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3rd May 2018, 09:31 AM | #35 |
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How Type 2 Diabetes Survived Evolution
Originally Posted by Science Life
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3rd May 2018, 11:23 AM | #36 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The species ability to reproduce? What does that even mean? It's individuals that reproduce, and evolution occurs as the differential representation of genes in the gene pool across generations.
If a particular gene is selected against, even at a low rate, given time it will no longer be present in the gene pool. Of course, as you point out selection pressures change all the time and genes get selected for, then against, over and over again, sometimes due to changing environments, other times due to random change (genetic drift). Some genes that are selected against are renewed in the gene pool through mutation, so, the story is certainly more complicated than casebro is implying. |
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3rd May 2018, 11:28 AM | #37 |
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If you kept to a pre-agricultural diet you would most likely not develop any Diabetes symptoms. Hence there was no pressure to remove the mutation from the gene pool.
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3rd May 2018, 11:44 AM | #38 |
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3rd May 2018, 01:50 PM | #39 |
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Right, instead of correcting the problem, just take a drug to alleviate the symptoms. The drug companies love that..
But then:
Quote:
The 50% efficacy, probably had more to do with non-adherence, and other co-founders not accounted for. |
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3rd May 2018, 02:22 PM | #40 |
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