Could broccoli be a secret weapon against diabetes?
Croutine one day, you will likely have full-fledged caffeine withdrawal headache that day.”
That said, too much coffee may also present a risk, no more than 400 milligrams daily -- one cup is 125 milligrams -- is probably the maximum for migraine patients, says Martin. “Large amounts of caffeine can bring on anxiety and depressive symptoms as well as headaches,” he explains.
Another trigger for migraine is MSG, which is a flavor enhancer used in a variety of processed foods, including frozen or canned foods, soups, international foods, snack foods, salad dressing, seasoning salts, ketchup, barbecue sauce, and heavily in Chinese oncentrated broccoli sprout extract may help type 2 diabetes patients manage their blood sugar, according to a new study. The findings could offer a much needed alternative to address the condition, which has become a worldwide epidemic.
Type 2 diabetes afflicts more than 300 million people globally, and as many as 15% of those patients cannot take the first-line therapy metformin because of kidney damage risks. Seeking a more viable path forward, Annika Axelsson and colleagues used a computational approach to identify compounds that might counter the disease-associated gene expression changes associated with type 2 diabetes.
The researchers constructed a signature for type 2 diabetes based on 50 genes, then used publically available expression datasets to screen 3,852 compounds for cooking, says Martin, also a UC Health physician.
“You eliminate it by eating fewer processed foods,” explains Martin. “You eat more natural things such as fresh vegetables, fresh fruits and fresh meats. MSG is most provocative when consumed in liquids such as soups.”
Nitrites are preservatives food in processed meats such as bacon, sausage, ham and lunch meat to preserve color and flavor. Martin says a diary study found that five percent of individuals with migraine were statistically more likely to have an attack on days when they consume nitrites. Use of nitrites in foods has declined with stronger government regulation drugs that potentially reverse disease. The most promising chemical -- sulforaphane, a naturally occurring compound found in cruciferous vegetables -- tamped down glucose production by liver cells growing in culture, and shifted liver gene expression away from a diseased state in diabetic rats.
When the researchers gave concentrated broccoli sprout extracts to 97 human type 2 diabetes patients in a 12-week randomized placebo-controlled trial, obese participants who entered the study with dysregulated disease demonstrated significantly decreased fasting blood glucose levels compared to controls.
The authors say developing gene signatures to investigate large public repositories of gene expression data could be a valuable strategy to rapidly identify clinically relevant compounds.