A new study from the University of Missouri School of Medicine provides the first evidence in humans that short-term lifestyle changes can impair blood vessel response to insulin. It’s also the first study to show how men and women react to these changes differently.
Obesity and type 2 diabetes both have vascular insulin resistance, which contributes to vascular disease. Researchers investigated vascular insulin resistance in 36 young and healthy men and women by subjecting them to a 10-day period of reduced physical activity, reducing their step count from 10,000 to 5,000 per day. In addition, the participants increased their sugary beverage consumption to six cans of soda per day.
“We know that premenopausal women have a lower incidence of insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease than men, but we wanted to see how men and women reacted to reduced physical activity and increased sugar in their diet over a short period of time,” said Camila Manrique-Acevedo, MD, associate professor of medicine.
Only in men did sedentary lifestyle and high sugar intake cause decreased insulin-stimulated leg blood flow and a drop in a protein called adropin, which regulates insulin sensitivity and is an important biomarker for cardiovascular disease, according to the findings.
“These findings highlight a sex-related difference in the development of vascular insulin resistance caused by a high-sugar, low-exercise lifestyle,” Manrique-Acevedo said.
