Researchers from the Temple University revealed regularly eating two and half times more calories than the recommended daily allowance will not only lead to obesity but also to heart disease, diabetes and even cancer.
Guenther Boden and Salim Merali conducted the research which had six healthy male participants, Foodbeast reported. Each of them consumed worth 6,000 calories of food every day for seven days while staying in bed and not engaging in any sort of activity, movement or exercise.
"It was a regular, American diet, composed of pizzas, hamburgers and that sort of thing," Salim told New Scientist.
After a week, all the volunteers gained an average of seven and a half pounds. Too, all of their glucose levels shot way up which caused them to develop resistance to the hormone insulin within two days of their diet.
It is a widely-known fact that developing resistance to insulin could bring danger to one's life as it threatens the health of the nervous system, kidneys and heart.
Insulin is produced when the body responds as blood glucose levels rise especially when a healthy person eats a meal. It stimulates the body to store excessive glucose, however people who develop insulin resistance are not able to absorb un-needed glucose in the same manner.
In other words, their blood glucose levels remain high after eating, and this could damage vital organs over time and could lead to type 2 diabetes. "By definition, they all developed diabetes," Francis Stephens at the University of Nottingham in the UK told New Scientist.
Aside from that, it was noticed that the volunteers urinated increasing amounts of oxidized lipid compounds as the week progressed, which is commonly observed in individuals who experience oxidative stress.
Oxidative stress deteriorates blood sugar regulation and amends the building of a protein that is characteristically in charge of moving glucose out of the bloodstream -- which results in glucose not being removed from the blood.
"Insulin sends the same message, but the glucose is not removed from the blood," Guenther said. "This is a brand new way to get from over-nutrition to insulin resistance."
The researchers then emphasized that oxidative stress and dented glucose-transporting protein could cause diabetes and obesity, noting some other mechanisms are probably still involved.
Guenther expects the participants to return to a healthy weight without any lasting effects. However, Francis claimed this could take a little while.
"Gaining 3.5 kg of fat in a week is pretty severe," he said. "It will probably take them several months to get rid of it."
