Diabetes Breakthrough: Fish Oil May Reverse Insulin Resistance; Here's How

Diabetes is a chronic disease that happens when your blood sugar levels are too high. And if it does not get controlled, it can damage your heart, eyes, kidneys, nerves, and blood vessels. While there are so many different ways to control high glucose, a breakthrough study has suggested that fish oil could be the magic mantra.

A Brazilian study published in the journal Nutrients suggests that fish oil improves glucose tolerance by influencing the body’s inflammatory response. According to experts, this animal study was conducted on rats that, while not obese, exhibited a condition resembling type 2 dia disorder marked by high blood sugar levels due to diminished insulin effectiveness.

Researchers say that omega-3 fatty acids, which are present in fish oil, can help reduce blood sugar levels by improving insulin sensitivity and reducing inflammation.

For this study, the researchers observed that administration of 2 grams of fish oil per kilogram of body weight (equivalent to 540 mg/g of eicosapentaenoic acid, or EPA, and 100 mg/g of docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA) three times every week for eight weeks reduced insulin resistance in non-obese rats, which also displayed improved levels of blood sugar, inflammatory markers, and lipid features, including total cholesterol, LDL, or bad cholesterol, and triglycerides.

The research, according to scientists, offers hope for non-obese type 2 diabetes patients, or 10-20 per cent of the worldwide total with the disease. “Our experiments involved Goto-Kakizaki rats, an animal model for non-obese type 2 diabetes. We found that insulin resistance can be reduced in these animals by modulating the inflammatory response to change the profile of defense cells from a pro-inflammatory state to an anti-inflammatory state. This process parallels the response of obese individuals with insulin resistance to omega-3 fatty acid supplementation,” said Dr. Rui Curi, Director of Butantan Institute’s Education Center, Professor of Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies in Health Sciences at Cruzeiro do Sul University, and coordinator of the study.

Dr. Curi said alterations in lymphocytes—white blood cells that help protect the body from infection and disease—have a huge impact on other immune system cells, triggering a cascade effect.

“In previous studies, we observed alterations in both lymphocytes and macrophages in non-obese rats with insulin resistance. In such cases, these cells produce more pro-inflammatory cytokines, as is central in obese people with diabetes,” Dr. Curi explained.

According to Dr. Curi, obesity and systemic inflammation are major risk factors for diabetes. In the case of non-obese diabetes patients, the primary hypothesis is that the cause is genetic.

“Most obese people have chronic low-level inflammation, which is known to affect the insulin signaling pathways. Adipose tissue, which is augmented in obesity, releases pro-inflammatory cytokines that affect the insulin signaling pathways, promoting insulin resistance. In the non-obese model, this impactful characteristic of adipose tissue is absent, but systemic inflammation is present,” Curi said.

So, fish oil supplementation helps reverse the pro-inflammatory profile, displaying a significant anti-inflammatory effect and reducing the polarization of important white blood cells. Thus, scientists think the action of omega-3 fatty acids on lymphocytes, modulating them from a proinflammatory state to an anti-inflammatory state, may have triggered the reduction in insulin resistance in these animals.

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