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hi all

like i said somewhere before
Endocrines R Us

insulin is absorbed in the upper intestine
levodopa is absorbed in the upper intestine

insulin and levodopa fight for the same seats
on the gut-to-blood-brain-barrier express

people with parkinson's often have sugar cravings,
and levodopa absorption problems with fat and protein,
and faulty thermo-regulatory (metabolism?) function.

makes me want to go hmmmmmmmmmmm

janet

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Research shows insulin helps regulate fat, too

NEW YORK, Apr 11 (Reuters Health) - Scientists in Massachusetts have
discovered that the sugar-regulating hormone insulin plays a crucial role
in moving fatty acids from the blood to fat-storage cells after a meal.

Although the research was conducted on the cellular level, eventually it
may lead to a better understanding of how fat is metabolized in the body,
the study's lead author told Reuters Health.

After a meal, levels of both sugar, or glucose, and fatty acids rise in the
blood. Scientists knew already that insulin reduces glucose in the blood in
two ways.

First, the hormone signals the liver to slow its production of glucose.

Second, insulin increases the uptake of sugar into tissues by causing
glucose transporters within each cell to move to the surface where they
draw sugar into the cell.

How the body lowers levels of fatty acids in the blood has been uncertain,
however.

Now Dr. Harvey F. Lodish and colleagues at the Whitehead Institute for
Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge report that insulin is also involved in regulating levels of
fatty acids in the blood.

A report on the findings appears in the April issue of the journal
Developmental Cell.

"Insulin causes cells to take up fatty acids from the blood," Lodish said
in an interview. "It does so by a fundamentally similar mechanism" to how
it handles sugar, he explained.

When the researchers added insulin to cells called adipocytes - which store
most of the body's fat - fatty acid transporters moved to the surface of
the cells from other parts of the cells.

These transporters, FATP1 and FATP4, seem to promote the uptake of fatty
acids into cells, because as the transporters congregated at the cell
membrane, levels of fatty acids in the blood dropped.

Now that researchers understand how fatty acid transporters affect the
uptake of fat on the cellular level, the next step, according to Lodish, is
to measure the impact the transporters have on overall levels of fat in the
body.

Genetically altering mice to have more or fewer fatty acid transporters may
reveal the role these transporters have in the metabolism of fat by the
whole body, he said.

Such research could also lead to a better understanding of diseases that
affect metabolism, including type 2 diabetes, Lodish and his colleagues
note in their report.

By Merritt McKinney
SOURCE: Developmental Cell 2002;2:477-488.
Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2002/04/11/eline/links/20020411elin002.
html

janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit perky, parky
pd: 55/41/37 cd: 55/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask]
smail: 375 Country Street, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0
a new voice: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/

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