Can stress provide protection to pancreatic beta-cells and prevent diabetes?

A wide variety of stresses are prevalent in the environment that could change the course and phenotypic expression of metabolic diseases. Amongst the various stresses the oxidative stress plays a pivotal role in the disease progression through free radical generation and may lead to various metabolic disorders such as non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension obesity, stroke, etc. Psychological stress has been implicated as a root cause of several psychosomatic disorders. Thus there cannot be a life without stress. Under such a scenario of stressful conditions further fueled by life style changes we propose to counteract any kind of stress by another milder form of stress that is likely to protect the cells from drastic effects of severe stress. Here we hypothesize that the beta-cells of islets of Langerhans can be protected from the diabetogenic insults and oxidative stress by inducing a protective stress response such as heat shock through dietary interventions.