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We propose that type 2 diabetes results from a vicious cycle of metabolically induced inflammation, impaired insulin responsiveness, and subsequent loss of homeostatic signaling. A crucial and previously under-recognized event contributing to this loss of homeostasis is a reduction in heat shock proteins (HSPs, or stress proteins). The central causal pathways of this cycle are the following: (a) obesity-driven inflammation promotes insulin resistance; (b) impaired insulin signaling in turn reduces the expression of HSPs, leaving tissues vulnerable to damage and allowing the accumulation of harmful proteins aggregates; and (c) resulting damage to the pancreatic beta-cell leads to further losses in insulin signaling, while a decline in anti-inflammatory HSPs allows inflammation to expand unhindered. Obesity and sedentary lifestyle perpetuate this cycle, while dieting and exercise forestall it by raising HSPs, reducing inflammation, and improving insulin signaling. Because HSP expression carries substantial metabolic costs, it is likely that an evolutionary history of high activity levels and resource scarcity selected for more conservative HSP expression than is appropriate for our current environment of caloric abundance.

Xenohormesis is a biological principle that explains how environmentally stressed plants produce bioactive compounds that can confer stress resistance and survival benefits to animals that consume them. Animals can piggyback off products of plants' sophisticated stress response which has evolved as a result of their stationary lifestyle. Factors eliciting the plant stress response can judiciously be employed to maximize yield of health-promoting plant compounds. The xenohormetic plant compounds can, when ingested, improve longevity and fitness by activating the animal's cellular stress response and can be applied in drug discovery, drug production, and nutritional enhancement of diet.

Organisms have evolved to survive rigorous environments and are not prepared to thrive in a world of caloric excess and sedentary behavior. A realization that physical exercise (or lack of it) plays a pivotal role in both the pathogenesis and therapy of type 2 diabetes mellitus (t2DM) has led to the provocative concept of therapeutic exercise mimetics. A decade ago, we attempted to simulate the beneficial effects of exercise by treating t2DM patients with 3 weeks of daily hyperthermia, induced by hot tub immersion. The short-term intervention had remarkable success, with a 1 % drop in HbA1, a trend toward weight loss, and improvement in diabetic neuropathic symptoms.

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Zinc administration in rats is associated with a rise in serum cholesterol level. This study examined the effect of zinc administration on serum lipoprotein values in man. Twelve healthy adult men ingested 440 mg of zinc sulfate per day for five weeks. High-density lipoprotein-cholesterol concentration decreased 25% below baseline values (40.5 to 30.1 mg/dL). Total cholesterol, triglyceride, and low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol levels did not change throughout the study. The sharp fall of the "antiatherogenic" lipoprotein, high-density lipoprotein, associated with zinc administration supports the concept that zinc ingestion may be atherogenic in man.

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