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Sample size: 8
The authors acknowledge this.

From the conclusion:-

“Being a pilot study, it requires sufficient expansion of sample sizes for statistical analysis as well as blinded studies.”

Yeah, it's probably worthy of further research, but (nonprofessional opinion) my view is that obesity trends are much more likely the driver for increases in type II diabetes.
This is ignoring that there could be a feedback link between them. If there is a chemical imbalance that could lead to type 2, it probably does so by tricking the body to consume more. Such that the two problems could easily be linked.
this would only account for one form of Type II diabetes.

It doesnt account for insulin resistance or the other issues found with it - many people who are type II have normal insulin levels

I'm a doctor and would say I'm quite familiar with T2DM, but I'm confused about what you're saying.
I think the OP is trying to argue that if TiO2 causes T2DM (by modulating production of insulin in the beta cells), it does not account for peripheral insulin resistance that is also present in T2DM.

So, it could be that T2DM patients simply don't clear TiO2 from their pancreas as well as non T2DM patients (perhaps impaired kidney function).

On another hand TiO2 is a "magnet" for other heavy metals. Researches are proposing using it in water filters to filter out other heavy metals because it attracts them so much. Consequently, having it accumulate in your tissue can't be good for long term health.

Well, that's better than the older view of T2s not having enough insulin.

Try looking up hyperinsulinemia. Maybe 90+% of T2 and pre-diabetics. The prescribed medications are making the disease progressive and chronic.

FYI, get tested because you might have it and not know your heading toward being T2 one day.

Cool early stage work, but why is it noteworthy enough to be here? Has it even been replicated?
I might be remembering things wrong, but doesn't a lot of chewing gum have Titanium Dioxide as its whitening agent for teeth?
don`t know for chewing gum, but it`s in tooth paste as well
Titanium Dioxide is used practically everywhere. Its the "white coloring" in paint, food,skincare, medicine,plastics,paper, coatings,inks,etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_dioxide
It's also widely used in milk, to cover up the blue color of milk from industrial milk production facilities where thousands of animals are locked up in big metal sheds with poor quality food.

Strangely, they don't have to list the titanium dioxide in the ingredients.

> Strangely, they don't have to list the titanium dioxide in the ingredients.

Thats illegal, they have at least to mention "Artificial coloring"

Milk is naturally blue. It’s the fat emulsion that covers it up. That’s why skim milk has a blue tinge.
Milk is in fact white. Source: grew up on a farm.
Milk is white, only skim milk is blue, so they sometimes add titanium dioxide as color, but it has to be listed on the ingredients.
Actually, raw milk has an ivory / yellow tint (depending how much grass the cows have eaten vs hay). Grain and soy feeding tends to produce white milk however.

Holding up a glass of grass fed cow milk to store bought milk really shows the difference. The store bought milk suddenly looks bleached white, like liquid paper.

Pretty sure it forms the white shell on mm's and Smarties.
M&M's and the hard shell coating chewing gum are among the highest concentrations in food. Also, white frosting and pudding.
It's in the hard shell coating in gums used to keep the soft gum core fresher and chewier. This has been tested by dissolving the shell and separating it from the gum.
They should try testing NASA employees. NASA loves titanium dioxide white paint.
Isn't nearly all paint mostly titanium dioxide?
Any opaque, non-black (or very dark) paint, yes. You can add other pigments to paint, but if you want that paint to be opaque rather than translucent, you need to add titanium dioxide (or something that'll have the same effect).
Right -- previously lead carbonate was used, until the problems with that were understood.
All paint is based on white paint so....

Also Titanium Dioxide is in foods and many of them.

This is because space is a vacuum which is a great insulator so heat builds up and titanium dioxide radiates well in the infrared.
Since non-diabetics accumulate close to zero Titanium Dioxide and it is ubiquitous in our 'modern' environment, it seems more likely that diabetics have for some reason difficulties clearing these crystals?
My first thought -- diabetes affects kidney function. The question is whether the same is found in type I diabetics.
Type I diabetes is an inability of the pancreas to produce insulin. In typical type II diabetes it is not a problem of production, but rather the uptake of the insulin is inhibited. Basically the body becomes resistant to the insulin signal.
My point was that high blood sugar damages the kidneys, so if TiO2 in kidneys is an effect rather than cause of diabetes, we would see it in both type I and type II.
This is one of those comments why I enjoy HN. Thanks
It looks it's a common ingredient for candy: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/scienceandfood/2016/04/12/... - "Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2) are widely used as a food additive and are consumed by millions of consumers on a daily basis, as manufacturers incorporate it into their food products. "
Worse, it's in most toothpaste.

> Titanium dioxide found to cause pre-cancerous growths in 40% of mice

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/toothpaste-additi...

At least you don't swallow that...
A person with a healthy diet probably swallows much more toothpaste (accidentally remnants flushed down etc) than candy.
> It is unclear whether the product might have a similar effect in people, and the scientists said their findings “cannot be extrapolated to humans”.

Cinnamon caused some kind of liver dysfunction (cancer, IIRC) in mice. I turns out that mice lacked a metabolic pathway for processing a byproduct of the breakdown of Cinnamon, a pathway that humans possess. Mouse models aren't perfect, so it's probably premature to use the value-laden word "worse" in relation to TiO2 in toothpaste.

Ceylon or Cassia cinnamon?
I don't recall, and Google is now useless because there's apparently been a spate of research over some cinnamon byproduct that now helps the liver, so that's all that comes up in the results. IIRC, whichever one was the variety that is commonly sold in the US. Sorry I can't be more sure.
He's talking about cassia, and the specific substance is coumarin which has a fairly high fatal dosage for humans. Note that cinnamaldehyde tastes really good and has nothing to do with coumarin if the chemical processing is done correctly.

Anyway in rodents at very low doses their liver converts it to some nasty epoxide which slowly gives rodents liver cancer; not an issue for primates who an only die from acute liver toxicity.

This was a "thing" generations ago, leading to endless old wives tale type advice about cinnamon "repelling and killing mice" which actually doesn't work because its too bitter if dusted around in pure form.

If you're bored its interesting to research cinnamon-flavored liquors, the more "natural and organic", at least if it uses cassia for flavor, the higher the poisonous coumarin content and in contrast the more processed refined pure cinnamaldehyde is essentially non-poisonous (lethal dose for a human would be about half a liter of the concentrated oil, extrapolating from animal studies, figure a percent or two of total body mass). From memory the LD50 of common table salt is about 10% lower than the LD50 of cinnamaldehyde, of course in a cinnamon flavored liquor the ethanol would kill a consumer long before the cinnamaldehyde would be an issue.

Titanium dioxide is used as a white colorant
Also active ingredient in a lot of sun screen.
It's an extremely common white pigment. According to wikipedia, it represents 70% of all pigment production worldwide.

You'll find it in food, paint, opaque white plastics, cosmetics, sunscreen (it blocks UV), paper, toothpaste, and tons of other stuff.

For example, powdered donuts can contain up to 100 mg Ti per serving.

Yike!

A friend tested me a while back and my bloog sugar was over 400.

I changed my life habbits completely.

I just got back from the doctor and my A1Cs are now 4.8!

I'm so excited!

Just curious, what sort of changes did you make?
Only drinks with zero sugar/carbs.

Started with Atkins diet, now I'm little looser. Just limited carbs.

Working out, mainly running.

Intermittent fasting. Each day, I eat something small in the morning, maybe slim fast, maybe nuts, and one meal in the afternoon.

What sort of changes? I was under the impression that you know when your blood sugar levels are so high. Did you lose any weight?
I've never been able to tell when my blood sugar was high or normal just by how I feel alone.
To a certain level you might not feel if your blood sugar is high or normal. But after 250 mg/dl, especially at 400 mg/dl you'll feel it. The most obvious symptom is fatigue and thirst, no matter how much you sleep you will feel exhausted all the time. You will want to drink a lot of water, you will urinate frequently. Your eyes will start to hurt. After being high for some time, your vision might get blurry, your eyes dry, you'll start vomiting.

Also you could smell your urine, if it stinks like ammonia, your blood sugar levels are high.

If your blood sugar levels are normal you feel healthy.

I've been a T1 since I was 10 and this is my experience. The real problem is not noticing highs but noticing lows. Because low blood sugar is much more threatening than highs for the short term.

I commented the changes I made to another commenter.

But regarding "feeling" when your blood sugar is high, I didn't feel it. However, I had symtoms of always urinating and really thirsty, my friend (diabetic) recognized the signs and tested me. It was 420.

Starting that day, I changed my life, hard.

To this day, I never "feel" my blood sugar fluctuate. I could get it up to 140, and down to 70, and I wouldn't be able to guess. I mean, I could guess by taking into account what I have eaten recently, but never based on "feeling" alone.

I can't find the article, but wasn't there also a doctor that was recently curing people (permanently) of type 2 by essentially having them fast for a dangerously long time and thus purging all the fat from their pancreas?

The theory they were proving out was that the fat built up in the pancreas was tricking their body into seeing the wrong amounts of insulin.

[ edit ] Adding link for Dr. Fung's research [1] as mentioned in a reply by SteveCoast

[1] - https://idmprogram.com/fatty-pancreas-t2d-9/

Dr Fung has been doing this for a long time, and it's not dangerous at all. My longest fast was for 14 days just water, though I wasn't diabetic.

Fung has lots of articles on Medium and /r/fasting is a great resource. Fung and also Taubes books are great and point out he maddening simplicity, that diabetes is high insulin is high sugar intake and that we treat it with... higher insulin. It's insanity, and because we can't see the wood for the trees we have smart people go study things like how much titanium you have in your body rather than solving the actual problem of carb intake.

> we have smart people go study things like how much titanium you have in your body rather than solving the actual problem of carb intake

Why can't we have both? We have a lot of smart people and the more ideas we have go through the scientific process of becoming a recognized treatment, the better. It doesn't take an army of smart people to create solutions, just a few. It's drive and motivation to solve problems that's in limited supply.

> "It's insanity, and because we can't see the wood for the trees we have smart people go study things like how much titanium you have in your body rather than solving the actual problem of carb intake."

if we can reduce type 2 diabetes without reducing carb intake, that's a win.

Thanks for jogging my memory. The only reason I mention dangerous is that fasting can in fact be very dangerous depending on a persons physiology and preexisting conditions. That said, it is much less dangerous than having T2D. So the benefits may outweigh the risks in this case.
Everything has a risk though, not even an exaggeration, actions or inactions. The problem with disucssing fasting is that it's not widely supported in modern western health, so there's little discussion or common knowledge about how to recognize problems during fasting.

What is great about problems during fasting though, generally speaking, to solve them is as easy as breaking the fast.

There are fasting clinics where doctors monitor the urine output from patients to determine if their body is expelling too many toxins at one time, and help control the fast.

I completely agree and having your blood and stool checked by a doctor or a lab is certainly a good mitigating control, especially for people that have preexisting issues such as; but not limited to, kidney or liver diseases.
> it constitutes the dominant light-scattering, that is, “white” component of indoor wall paints, drinks, foods, toothpastes, medications, cosmetics, paper, and plastics.

I understand why TiO2 is used in paint and even in cosmetics but why should it be in anything that is eaten or in medicines? None of that needs to be shining white.