In a press release the other day, the Harvard School of Public Health announced that certain chemicals restored the glucose and insulin levels of obese diabetic mice. This is great news for diabetic sufferers, especially those with Type 2 diabetes (over 90% of all diabetics have Type 2 diabetes; that's close to 18 million people in the US alone, and Type 2 diabetes causes about 200,000 deaths a year).

There are many factors that can lead to Type 2, and one of them is obesity. That doesn't mean that every Type 2 case is caused by obesity (my friends who have Type 2 diabetes are healthy, physically-fit, active people). But there is a chemical link between obesity and insulin problems: it turns out that being fat puts a lot of strain on the part of a cell that produces proteins and fats. This part called the ER (endoplasmic reticulum) can fail due to obesity. The result: cells get inflamed, the body's reaction to insulin changes, and diabetes can kick in.

Two chemicals can reduce stress on the ER: one is PBA (4-phenyl butyric acid) and the other is TUDCA (taurine-conjugated derivative). These two chemicals successfully treated mice with Type 2 diabetes. And there's more good news: both chemicals have already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for other medical uses, it should be easy to take these and similar chemicals and use them to fight diabetes!