Alaska Dispatch

Alaska is the fattest state in the West, according to a recent study -- and with obesity comes a myriad of health risks, including Type 2 diabetes. But a solution to the state's health problems may lie within an Alaskan's best friend: the sled dog.

Sled dogs feast on a diet so high in fat it would lead to diabetes in almost any other animal. But because the dogs burn fat as their primary energy source, their insulin and glucose systems are less burdened than they would be in a human who eats a fatty diet, according to Michael Davis, a professor of physiology at Oklahoma State University.

"Any animal that can run a thousand miles in nine days has a pretty impressive metabolism," Davis said.

If Davis can isolate the gene that tells the dog's metabolism to burn fat instead of storing it, he said, the fight against Type 2 diabetes will take a big step forward.

Currently Davis is in Two Rivers, just east of Fairbanks, to finish collecting samples for a diabetes study he's working on at a kennel owned by mushers Aliy Zirkle and Allen Moore. Zirkle -- the first woman to win the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race -- and Moore -- a three-time Copper Basin 300 champion -- operate SP Kennel, which received the Humanitarian Award at this year's Copper Basin 300.

Three times a year -- once early in the season when the dogs, Zirkle said, are "couch potatoes"; once halfway through their training; and once when the animals get into top racing form -- after Zirkle's team runs a 25-mile loop near the kennel, Davis tests the dogs' blood and muscle, tracking changes over the training season to see how the animals' insulin sensitivity changes as their fitness improves.

Type 2 diabetics struggle with insulin resistance -- their muscles do a poor job of pulling insulin out of the bloodstream. Dogs like Skittles, a "buff babe" who's one of Zirkle's leaders, are the perfect subjects for a Type 2 diabetes study because their insulin sensitivity increases dramatically as they exercise. While a previously sedentary human's insulin sensitivity might double or triple over the course of a few months of exercise, a sled dog's sensitivity can increase ten- to twentyfold. That massive increase makes for statistical results that are easier to study than the less impressive differences found in humans and other animals.

The 18 dogs participating in the study are broken into three groups of six. Two of the groups are tested immediately after they run. Dogs in one group have a muscle biopsy taken (about half the size of a paper matchstick) and dogs in the second group have catheters inserted so multiple tiny blood samples can be taken every five minutes over the course of several hours. The same dog's muscle and blood can't be tested because the anesthetic used to take the muscle biopsy throws off the results of the blood test.

The dogs in the third group are the control subjects. Their insulin sensitivity is tested, too, but they don't participate in the 25-mile run prior to testing.

Davis began studying competitive sled dogs during the 2000 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. When Davis first asked the race's head veterinarian for permission to study Iditarod dogs, the vet said yes on one condition: that he also look at gastric ulcers, a stomach problem some dogs had died from. After studying the problem Davis told mushers they could treat it themselves using an over-the-counter ulcer medication available at any drugstore.

Davis said he doesn't know why exactly the medication works on the dogs, but he knows that it does, and that far fewer dogs have died from ulcers since mushers started administering the medication.

This isn't the first time Davis has worked with Zirkle's dogs; last year, he put them on a treadmill to study their heart rates, which increase drastically when they run and return to normal astonishingly quickly after they stop running.

When Zirkle runs her dogs through the 25-mile loop she has to do it at a speed that the dogs can handle when they're in couch potato shape so the results are constant for each of the three trials. That means that when the dogs are in top shape, like they are now, the run is laughably easy and Zirkle has to talk to the dogs constantly to get them to run at a slower pace.

"They'll come back from this run tomorrow and say ‘Well, what was that?'" Zirkle said. "'Just a stretch out?'"

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