Diabetes Prevention

Diabetes is a disease of combustion. In diabetes, carbohydrates are rushed through the body without being digested, or warehoused in the liver. Involved in this condition are two glands: 1) the little islands of Langerhans in the pancreas, which secrete insulin, a hormone essential for carbohydrate digestion; 2) the anterior pituitary. Latest medical theory is that somehow the pituitary hormone, working overtime, stimulates the islands of Langerhans to febrile activity. First they pour forth enormous quantities of insulin; later their cells become exhausted, die from overwork.

Once diabetes has started, doctors can usually smother it with insulin injections.

The great problem is how to prevent this apparently hereditary disease. Last week the New England Journal of Medicine published an article telling how various workers had prevented diabetes in animals. Authors: Charles Herbert Best, co-discoverer of insulin, Reginald Evan Haist and James Campbell of the University of Toronto.

The scientists experimented with dogs, gave some of them injections of anterior pituitary extract until their islets were worn out and their insulin content very low. Then they fed one set of animals a normal diet. Set No 2 got no food for several days. Set No. 3 got only fats. Set No. 4 got insulin and a normal amount of carbohydrates. Results: the first group developed severe diabetes; the others soon returned to normal insulin production and good health. Fasting and fat-feeding, as well as insulin injections, said the doctors, "allow the pancreatic islets to rest," give them time to restore fatigued cells.

Drs. Best, Haist and Campbell strongly urged that the same regime be tried on human beings, to relieve patients in the early stages of the disease and prevent it in children of diabetic families. Of course, they cautioned, "wide departures from the normal diet are permissible only for short intervals. . . . This is particularly true for growing children who must have ... all the essential food factors." But they felt sure that, with a little experiment, special diets could be worked out.

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