Shunning water linked to high blood sugar

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A glass of tap water is served at a restaurant in New York June 10, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK | Mon Oct 24, 2011 3:22pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who drink less than a couple of glasses of water each day may be more likely to develop abnormally high blood sugar, a new study suggests.

When someone's blood sugar levels are high, but not high enough to fit the definition of diabetes, doctors often consider that person to have "pre-diabetes" -- which puts them at risk of developing the disease itself.

In the new study, adults who drank only half a liter of water -- about two glasses -- or less each day were more likely to develop blood sugar levels in the pre-diabetes range, versus people who drank more water.

But whether simply drinking water will cut your risk of blood sugar problems is still up in the air.

The findings show a correlation between water intake and blood sugar, but do not prove cause-and-effect, said senior researcher Lise Bankir, of the French national research institute INSERM.

Still, it is plausible based on biology, Bankir told Reuters Health in an email.

A hormone called vasopressin is the potential missing link, according to the researchers.

Vasopressin -- also known as antidiuretic hormone -- helps regulate the body's water retention. When we are dehydrated, vasopressin levels go up, causing the kidneys to conserve water. But research suggests that higher vasopressin levels may also elevate blood sugar.

There are vasopressin receptors in the liver, the organ responsible for producing glucose (sugar) in the body, Bankir explained. And one study found that injecting healthy people with vasopressin caused a temporary spike in blood sugar.

"There are good arguments to suggest that there could be a real cause-and-effect relationship in the association we have found," Bankir said, "but this is not a proof."

The findings are based on 3,615 French adults who were between the ages of 30 and 65, and had normal blood sugar levels at the outset. About 19 percent said they drank less than half a liter (17 ounces) of water each day, while the rest drank up to a liter or more.

Over the next nine years, 565 study participants developed abnormally high blood sugar and 202 developed type 2 diabetes.

When the researchers looked at the participants' risk according to water intake, they found that people who drank at least 17 ounces of water per day were 28 percent less likely to develop high blood sugar than those who drank less than that amount.

There was no strong statistical link between water intake and risk of developing diabetes, however.

One obvious explanation for the connection with high blood sugar would be that people who drink little water may instead be reaching for sugary drinks -- which could lead to weight gain and impaired blood sugar control.

But Bankir and her colleagues accounted for sugary drinks and alcohol, as well as people's body weight at the start of the study, their reported exercise levels and certain other health factors. And the link between low water intake and high blood sugar persisted.

However, they could not account for everything, including generally healthy or less-healthy eating habits.

"Healthier behaviors correlating with higher water drinking could account for the observed association," the researchers write.

As for why there was no link between water intake and diabetes itself, Bankir said that the number of diabetes cases in the study was "too small to get a significant result." A larger study might have been able to detect a statistically significant link, she noted.

Further studies are needed to confirm the findings on blood sugar, according to Bankir.

But for now, she said, replacing sugary, high-calorie drinks with water would be a good idea for anyone. "In Western countries, the consumption of sugar is surely too high and contributes to obesity," Bankir said.

"Drinking less of them (sugary drinks) and more pure water can only be good in my view," she said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/quKw3E Diabetes Care, online October 12, 2011.

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Kids' Sugar Cravings Might Be Biological

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September 26, 2011

Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approx. 9:00 a.m. ET

Ask a child if they like sweets and the answer is almost universally a resounding "Yes!" It's no surprise to most parents that kids love candy, cookies, sweetened drinks, and some kids have even been known to add sugar to a bowl of Frosted Flakes. But don't blame the kids, say researchers, it's biology.

Scientific evidence shows that children not only have a stronger preference for sugar than adults – but that sweet-tooth is hardwired from Day One.

"We know that the newborn can detect sweet and will actually prefer sweeter solutions to less sweet ones. The basic biology of the child is that they don't have to learn to like sweet or salt. It's there from before birth," explains Julie Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

 

Unlike adults, who often find overly sugary things unpleasant, Mennella says kids are actually living in different sensory worlds than adults when it comes to basic tastes.

"They prefer much more intense sweetness and saltiness than the adult and it doesn't decrease until late adolescence, and we have some evidence they may be more sensitive to bitter taste," Mennella says.

A reason for this may be that a preference for sweet, caloric substances during rapid growth may have given children as an evolutionary advantage when calories were scarce. That notion is supported by the fact that sugar doesn't just taste good to children -– it actually makes them feel good too.

Mennella's research has shown that sugar is a natural pain reliever in children, and many hospitals even put a sweet tasting liquid in a baby's mouth during circumcisions or heel stick procedures to help lessen the pain.

When researchers gave adults and children water mixed with various amounts of sugar, adults preferred sugar concentrations similar to that of a can of soda, while finding higher concentrations too sweet. By comparison, children preferred at least twice that concentration, and younger children had virtually no limit.

"You can keep putting sugar in to the point where you can't dissolve it in the water anymore and they still like it," says Sue Coldwell, a researcher at the University of Washington who has studied kids and sweets.

But there seems to be an age limit on the super-sized sugar preference.

Coldwell and her colleagues suspected that sugar preferences changed during adolescence. They checked a bunch of indicators, like body image and hormones, and then they checked bone growth. They gave the sugar-water test to adolescents while simultaneously measuring a marker of bone growth in their urine. What they found was that kids who were still growing preferred sweets. While those whose growth had already stopped –- around age 15 or 16 — had taste preferences similar to adults.

Exactly how this all works is still somewhat of a mystery, but Coldwell says that one important clue lies in the discovery that growing bones actually secrete hormones that can influence metabolism. Other well-known metabolic hormones like leptin and insulin have been shown to act on brain areas that control cravings and appetites, and even directly bind to the tongue where they affect the preference for sweet tastes. Coldwell suspects that hormones from growing bones may be doing the same thing. In other words, it's not your kid's fault he raided the cookie jar – the hormones from his growing bones made him do it.

"I don't know for sure but I am very suspicious that the bones are somehow telling either the brain or the tongue that there is energy needed for their growth and signaling for that preference to increase," says Coldwell.

That's not to say a kid can't overdo it. In a modern world of calorie overload and childhood obesity, cravings for sugar are no longer the evolutionary advantage they once might have once been. But if the goal is to get children to reduce their intake of sugar, researchers say understanding the biology behind their cravings is the first step.

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