Acid blood: Animal protein promotes diabetes
Larissa Melville completed her traineeship in the editorial team of . After studying biology at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich, she first got to know digital media online at Focus and then decided to learn medical journalism from scratch.
More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.A disturbed acid-base balance obviously influences the risk of developing diabetes. Animal protein in particular could promote diabetes. Because the consumption of meat & Co. lowers the pH value in the blood.
How high the PH value is also depends on what a person eats. It is not acidic foods such as lemons or vinegar that promote an acidic environment, but foods that are converted into acids in the human body.
Animal proteins promote acid formation
Animal proteins such as meat, sausage or fish as well as cheese and eggs make the blood particularly “sour”.Because they contain many sulfur-containing amino acids such as cysteine or methionine. These are broken down into acidic sulphate in the body. In addition, alcohol, sugar, white flour products and phosphorus-containing lemonades are also considered acidifiers.
Laboratory tests show that the acidic level that arises in this way seems to impede the function of the beta cells in the pancreas. These produce the hormone insulin, which transports sugar from the blood into the body's cells. Therefore, not only the excessive consumption of sugar, but also the consumption of animal protein can drive up blood sugar levels.
The counterparts to the acids are the bases, which are mainly found in vegetables and fruits. If you eat too little of this, you additionally increase the acid load in the body.
Basic or acidic?
Jessica Kiefte-de Jong from the University of Rotterdam and her colleagues have now investigated to what extent an acid-heavy diet actually increases the risk of diabetes. To do this, they analyzed the data from three large studies with almost 190,000 participants. Eight percent of the subjects developed type 2 diabetes in the study period of more than 20 years.
In all studies, the subjects had to answer questions about their diet several times. They ticked a list of what and how much they had eaten of the various products. From this information, the researchers deduced how strong the acid load of the participants was.
30 percent higher risk
In all three studies, the scientists found a clear association between the risk of diabetes and the amount of acid-forming foods consumed. For test subjects who had consumed the largest amount of acid-forming products, it was 30 percent higher than for those who ate the least amount of animal products.
The sugar metabolism of women was particularly sensitive to animal protein. If the scientists included this in their data, the diabetes risk was increased by 37 percent for women and only 26 percent for men. “This suggests that the consumption of acidic foods has different effects depending on gender. The sex hormones may play a role here, ”the researchers write.
A widespread disease
About seven million people in Germany have type 2 diabetes - and the trend is rising. The disease begins with the body's cells becoming increasingly insulin resistant - they need more and more insulin to absorb enough sugar from the blood. At some point the pancreas can no longer produce enough insulin to compensate for the resistance - blood sugar rises. If the pancreas is exhausted, insulin production also falls, which further increases the sugar in the blood.
Source: Jessica C. Kiefte-de Jong et al .: Diet-dependent acid load and type 2 diabetes: pooled results from three prospective cohort studies. Diabetologia (February 2017). DOI: 10.1007 / s00125-016-4153-7
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