Assistant Professor Amy Kirkham from the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education has won the End Diabetes 2022 Award presented annually by Diabetes Canada to the winners of the End Diabetes Awards research competition.
The award worth $300,000 will fund Kirkham’s research into the effectiveness of intermittent fasting on blood sugar control in people with obesity, who have or are at risk of getting type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is caused by several different risk factors, including obesity, which accounts for up to 90 percent of diabetes risk in Canada.
“In healthy individuals, blood sugars are controlled by a hormone called insulin, which lowers blood sugar levels,” said Kirkham, whose research uses advanced imaging, biosensors and lifestyle interventions to understand, treat and improve the health of individuals with cancer, cardiovascular or metabolic disease.
“For people with type 2 diabetes, they can no longer produce or use enough insulin to control their blood sugar, which can lead to health complications such as nerve damage, blindness, heart disease, kidney failure, anxiety, amputations and even death.”
Kirkham’s study will focus on time-restricted eating, a type of intermittent fasting where eating is restricted to a specific window of time during the day. The study will compare the impact of three eating windows times on daily blood sugar control, blood pressure and metabolism:
- Early morning: eating only between 7:00 am - 4:00 pm
- Mid-morning: eating only between 9:00 am – 6:30 pm or
- Delayed: eating only between 12:00 pm – 9:00 pm
The study will also compare how much people like each regime and how hard they are to follow.
“As you might expect, finishing your last meal of the day before 4:00 pm might be challenging for some individuals to follow long-term,” said Kirkham. “However, the practicality of health interventions needs to be balanced with how well they work to impact health outcomes. Our study will try to examine this balance.”
Rebecca Christensen, a post-doctoral student in Kirkham’s lab funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) postdoctoral fellowship, will be co-leading the project as part of her clinical research training, with KPE Assistant Professor Jenna Gillen acting as co-investigator.
“Time-restricted is considered to be safe, easy to follow, and its positive effects on body weight and blood sugar control means it could be effective for the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes,” said Christensen.
“The results we obtain will help us determine if intermittent fasting can be used in clinical care to prevent or manage type 2 diabetes.”
The study is among 30 winning projects across Canada that have been evaluated by scientists with expertise in diabetes research, with input from people with lived experience, as well as Diabetes Canada’s National Research Council. Each project will receive a $100,000 grant annually for three years.
“Canada has a well-earned reputation for innovation in diabetes treatment and care that has dramatically improved the quality of life for people with diabetes,” said Laura Syron, president and CEO of Diabetes Canada in a press release. “Diabetes Canada is excited to invest in these researchers and their teams as they work to advance new discoveries and the next big breakthrough in diabetes care.”