Even people with type 2 diabetes can see their muscles start working like healthy muscles again after losing a lot of weight — and it’s not because they make more sugar transporters, but because the ones they have work better.

40

Pro

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Against

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

40

Community contributions welcome

40

Restoration of insulin responsiveness in skeletal muscle of morbidly obese patients after weight loss. Effect on muscle glucose transport and glucose transporter GLUT4.

Cohort Study

Human

1992 Feb

After losing weight from gastric bypass surgery, the patients' muscles became better at responding to insulin—even though the amount of a key protein (GLUT4) didn't change. This means the improvement wasn't because of more of that protein, which is exactly what the claim says.

Contradicting (0)

0

Community contributions welcome

No contradicting evidence found

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.

Source Study

Restoration of insulin responsiveness in skeletal muscle of morbidly obese patients after weight loss. Effect on muscle glucose transport and glucose transporter GLUT4.

Score: 40

DOI: 10.1172/JCI115638

Similar Assertions

Even though muscles get better at using sugar after weight loss, the amount of the GLUT4 sugar transporter protein in the muscle doesn’t change — so something else must be making it work better.

40

0

84%

After losing weight, muscles get better at using sugar not because they make more GLUT4 proteins, but because the existing proteins move to the right place or work better.

40

0

81%

When very overweight people lose a lot of weight, their muscles get much better at using insulin to pull sugar out of the blood, which helps fix their diabetes or prediabetes.

40

0

75%

When people are extremely overweight, their muscles are much worse at pulling sugar out of the blood — even when insulin is present — but this gets much better after they lose weight.

40

0

73%