Linda von Wartburg
Jan 17, 2011
Every time the heart beats, about 20 percent of the blood it pumps out goes to the kidneys to be cleaned.
Most
type 2 meds work by increasing
insulin production in one way or another. The extra insulin lowers
blood sugar
by ushering it out of your bloodstream and into your cells, where it
may, unfortunately, make you fat. Wouldn't it be nice if instead, you
could lower your high blood sugar by just flushing it right down the
toilet?
A couple of pharma companies are working on a therapy that may do
just that. Their treatment, called an SGLT2 inhibitor, causes your extra
blood sugar to flow harmlessly away in your urine. To understand how an
SGLT2 (sodium glucose transporter 2) inhibitor works, you have to know a
little about what the kidneys do.
Every time the heart beats, about 20 percent of the blood it pumps
out goes to the kidneys to be cleaned. The blood ends up in a tuft of
tiny blood vessels, called a glomerulus, which is surrounded by a
cup-like sac, called a Bowman's capsule. Each kidney has a million or so
of these little arrangements.
High blood pressure in the glomerulus forces all the small molecules
in the blood right through the blood vessel walls and into the Bowman's
capsule, where they begin their journey down a little tubule toward the
bladder. This liquid filtrate contains not only waste products, which
the body wants to get rid of, but also a lot of useful molecules, which
the body doesn't want to lose. One of those useful molecules is glucose.
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