It is no license to gain weight, but a University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences study does show that people, and particularly women, with Type 1 diabetes who have more fat have less heart disease.
Added weight indicates that the chronic disease is under better control with insulin therapy, thus reducing the degree of heart disease.
“Insulin in the right doses adds to weight,” said Dr. Trevor Orchard, professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and the study’s principal investigator. “For that reason, it is important that people with Type 1 who put on weight with more insulin don’t feel bad about it. It is a sign they are doing well.”
People with Type 1 diabetes must inject or inhale insulin, the hormone produced in the pancreas that allows blood glucose to enter cells and be used as energy. People with uncontrolled Type 1 diabetes lose weight because their bodies cannot use blood glucose.
While researchers noted an association between fatness and coronary artery calcification, they also noted in two-thirds of the patients with calcification that the relationship was reversed: People with more fat had less severe calcification.
Eliminating kidney disease, another common complication of diabetes, as a factor weakened the association between added weight and less calcification in men, but not in women.
Orchard said the study should not encourage people with Type 1 diabetes to gain weight. But it does suggest that weight recommendations for Type 1 diabetes may differ from those for the general population.
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