<p style="text-indent:0px; line-height:12px;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Stanford, CA -</span><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">By ANUK Staff<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">1.29.13</p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"><p>Scientists from Stanford University reported that individuals with a unique genetic mutation that predisposes them to diabetes may be able to ease their symptoms with beta carotene, a compound commonly found in carrots.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">By knitting together databases with information about genetic analyses and lifestyle risk factors, researchers say they may have identified some gene-environment match-up that not only increase risk for diabetes, but may help to prevent it as well.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">“Over the past seven to nine years, [researchers] have been finding genetic risk factors. Some of them are pretty potent and have a lot of effects, but a lot is still relative. We are not really finding the smoking guns of the genome that we were expecting, that would really tell us why diseases like Type 2 diabetes have some genetic basis,” said study author Dr. Atul Butte, an Associate Professor of Systems Medicine in pediatrics at Stanford.</p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"><p>Having a genetic mutation isn’t enough; that genetic mutation, in the presence of high or low levels of certain nutrients, might prime the body to process glucose less effectively. Both beta carotene, and gamma tocopherol, a form of vitamin D, which is found in vegetable fats like canola oils and margarine, interact with the gene and influence risk for Type 2 diabetes, but in opposite ways. Higher beta carotene levels appears to protect against diabetes, and presumably improve the gene’s efficiency in producing insulin, while elevated gamma tocopherol may increase a person’s risk for the disease.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">“What the findings suggest is that if you have a genetic marker now or a predisposition for Type 2 diabetes, all you really need to do is increase the number of carrots you eat to increase your beta carotene, and maybe you can compensate for having that spot in your genome,” says Butte.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Although results are promising, Butte’s work is still preliminary and further studies will be needed to confirm that increasing levels of beta-carotene in the diet would be enough to offset the effect of the diabetes inducing genes. </p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"><p><a class="btn btn-sm btn-primary col-lg-12" style="white-space: normal;" href="http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/23/can-carrots-reduce-the-effect-of-diabetes-causing-genes/" target="_new">Time</a></p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">
