SNR #186: Dr. Jake Kushner, MD - Nutrition for Type 1 Diabetes

Sigma Nutrition Radio

Danny Lennon

Sigma, Dietetics, Evidencebased, Nutrition, Training, Health & Fitness, Science, Diet, Fitness, Evidence, Bodybuilding, Health

4.8 • 626 Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2017

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Jake Kushner is leading the efforts in Diabetes and Endocrinology at Texas Children's Hospital. Dr. Kushner is a McNair Medical Institute Scholar at the Baylor College of Medicine. As the Chief of Pediatric Diabetes and Endocrinology at Baylor College of Medicine, he is a major thought leader in type 1 diabetes care and research. His overarching career goal is to help children and young adults with diabetes and other endocrine disorders live long, healthy lives. His administrative priorities focus upon developing and promoting innovative new models of patient-centered care, education, and cutting edge research.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Kushner earned his medical doctorate from Albany Medical College in New York. He completed a residency in pediatrics at Brown University. He then completed a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology at Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, followed by a 5-year research fellowship at the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School.

Prior to arriving at the Baylor College of Medicine Dr. Kushner was at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Dr. Kushner has received national awards, including elected membership to the prestigious American Society of Clinical Investigation. He currently serves as the president of the Society for Pediatric Research. Dr. Kushner's research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the March of Dimes, amongst other sources. His clinical interests include the care of children with type 1 diabetes.

Dr. Kushner's research is focused upon of the insulin-secreting beta cells of the pancreas. A major theme of the Kushner lab includes studies to understand the origins of adult beta cell growth and regeneration. Until recently it was not clear exactly where adult beta cells came from during postnatal life. Dr. Kushner and colleagues have carried out studies in adult mice with a variety of advanced tools. In contrast to the dominant views, they do not observe any contribution to beta cell growth in adult mice from "tissue stem cells". Instead, they find that beta cells expand by simple division "self-renewal". Dr. Kushner and colleagues are currently extending this work, with the goal of studying beta cell regeneration under a variety of normal and disease conditions.

In This Episode We Discuss:

The intricacies of type 1 diabetes
Beta cell dysfunction
Nutritional approaches to type 1 diabetes: standard care and carbohydrate restriction
Issues with low-carb for T1D: hypoglycaemic episodes? ketones? long-term safety unknown?
"Low carb is not for everyone with T1D. Frankly, there is so much that we don’t know. But, low carb management of T1D can be quite advantageous for those who choose it." - Jake Kushner, MD

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yeah, I guess I would like to say that my interest in this topic, you know, comes from my role as a physician, but as a
0:21.6	scientist, I am very concerned about what we know and what we don't know. And I think what we don't
0:28.5	know is vast in this topic. And we need proper studies. So I have a role as a physician, and I help people
0:36.0	to think about what they can do.
0:38.3	But if you ask me as a scientist what I think about low-carb nutrition, I can tell you
0:43.8	in a very long list of things that we don't understand. Hello and welcome to another episode of Sigma Nutrition Radio. As always, I am your host,
1:08.5	Daniel Lennon, and you are very welcome to another episode of the podcast.
1:13.5	Today we're at episode 186, and I'm just going to be joined in a few moments by Dr. Jake Kushner,
1:22.2	who is a pediatric endocrinologist who is involved in both frontline care of patients as well as in research.
1:31.3	So he's been leading up the efforts in diabetes and endocrinology at Texas Children's Hospital for a number of years now,
1:38.3	as well as being the chief of pediatric diabetes and endocrinology at Baylor College of Medicine as well,
1:45.8	looking at some things within research.
1:48.8	And some of the things he started to implement in practice have been related to looking
1:54.5	at the nutritional and lifestyle interventions we can use in the care of type 1 diabetic patients. And one of those strategies
2:03.3	being is carbohydrate restriction, a viable option for someone with type 1 diabetes. So, of
2:09.5	course, there's been a lot of talk for those with type 2 about how maybe a lower carbohydrate
2:14.1	intake can potentially be favorable. But in type 1, there's been a lot more course to be a bit more skeptical or a bit more
2:22.6	concerned about using this due to a variety of reasons that I'm hoping to bring up with Dr.
2:27.9	Jake Kushner.
2:29.1	And he has been looking at this idea of using carbohydrate restriction within type 1 diabetes and has
2:35.4	used it with certain patients in certain circumstances. And so it'll be interesting to dive into
2:40.8	those views. Before we get into the episode, just one announcement I wanted to make because
	...

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