In treating diabetes, post-meal elevation of glucose ranges is a crucial therapeutic goal. Current scientific research point out that consuming greens, protein, or fats earlier than carbohydrates can reasonable a post-meal rise in blood glucose, pointing to the potential of meal-sequencing as a easy and sustainable dietary technique.
Scientists have usually attributed the advantages of this technique to slower gastric emptying and better secretion of incretin hormones, akin to GLP-1, that lower blood glucose ranges. Nevertheless, the roles that intestine and pancreatic hormones, in addition to neural pathways, play on this course of have remained much less understood. This motivated a world workforce of researchers to research how the timing of fats consumption influences glucose ranges, hormone secretion, and gastric emptying.
Our group has lengthy been fascinated with sensible dietary approaches that individuals can proceed in on a regular basis life. Meal-sequencing is interesting as a result of it merely adjustments how a meal is eaten quite than requiring folks to keep away from whole meals teams.”
Daisuke Yabe, corresponding creator, Kyoto College
The workforce used mice of their investigation, first having the themes quick in a single day. The mice had been then divided into three teams, with one receiving water adopted by glucose, one other olive oil adopted by glucose quarter-hour later, and the ultimate group glucose adopted by olive oil quarter-hour later. After feeding the mice accordingly, the researchers measured blood glucose, plasma insulin, glucagon, GIP, and GLP-1 ranges. The workforce additionally gave the mice acetaminophen and estimated gastric emptying by measuring blood acetaminophen ranges after oral administration.
The scientists then repeated this experiment in a couple of different teams of mice, together with these with kind 2 diabetes and people missing the GLP-1 receptor. Further experiments additionally included inhibiting glucagon or GLP-1 signaling, performing bilateral sub-diaphragmatic vagus nerve ligation, and testing different dietary fat to substantiate that responses weren’t particular to olive oil.
These take a look at outcomes revealed that giving mice olive oil earlier than quite than after glucose decreased an early rise in blood glucose ranges and slowed gastric emptying. Consuming fat earlier than glucose additionally elevated early secretion of glucagon, GIP, and GLP-1, and all of those useful results had been retained in mice with kind 2 diabetes and extreme insulin deficiency.
The researchers noticed that inhibiting both glucagon or GLP-1 signaling alone didn’t attenuate the glucose-lowering impact of the olive oil preload, whereas mixed inhibition did, and that glucagon signaling, which is greatest recognized for elevating blood glucose, additionally contributes to the glucose-lowering response of an olive oil preload in mice. The experiments involving vagus nerve ligation additionally prompt that vagal pathways contribute to those responses.
By offering a physiological rationalization for the affect of nutrient order on post-meal glucose ranges, this examine strengthens the rationale for testing sensible meal-sequencing methods in folks with and with out diabetes.
“Our findings recommend that the order through which vitamins attain the intestine can have interaction a coordinated hormone-nerve response that adjustments how shortly the abdomen delivers glucose to the gut,” says Yabe.
Supply:
Journal reference:
Liu, Y., et al. (2026). Olive Oil Earlier than Oral Glucose Delays Gastric Emptying and Lowers Glycemia Via Partially Redundant Glucagon and GLP-1 Signaling in Mice. Diabetes. DOI: 10.2337/db26-0531. https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/doi/10.2337/db26-0531/172660/Olive-Oil-Earlier than-Oral-Glucose-Delays-Gastric

