People of south Asian origin are more prone to Type 2 diabetes due to the way their muscles burn fat, a study finds.

The team from Glasgow University, Scotland, discovered that people from the region have muscles which do not burn fat as well as Euorpeans.

This could raise diabetes risk by contributing to a poorer response to the hormone insulin, reports the PLoS One journal.

Diabetes UK said reseachers could now look at ways to boost fat-burning

- BBC Ceefax 3/12/2010

__________________
https://holy-lance.blogspot.com

South Asian diabetes risk clues found, UK study says This link leads to the full article.

and Fat Oxidation, Fitness and Skeletal Muscle Expression of Oxidative/Lipid Metabolism Genes in South Asians: Implications for Insulin Resistance? here is the full text of the paper they are talking about.
It's sometimes helpful to look at other work by the same team so you can see where they are coming from.
Levels of physical activity and relationship with markers of diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk in 5474 white European and South Asian adults screened for type 2 diabetes.

from the most recent study we see from the conclusion
Do bear in mind they were comparing 20 pairs of European and South Asian Glaswegians.
Common sense should be sufficient to work out one difference between these two groups is skin colour and at the Latitude of Glasgow that difference will impact on the 25(OH)D status of those with a darker skin tone though it's likely both groups will be vitamin D insufficient the impact of vitamin D deficiency will be greater on those with the darker skin.

There are several ways we can improve fat burning.
The simplest is to swap from pro inflammatory omega 6 industrially made seed oils to using COCONUT OIL. This is a good source of medium chain triglyceride's and the body uses these in a similar way to glucose and so this promotes the use of ketone metabolism and thus enhances metabolic flexibility.
Another simple idea is Intermittent fasting. If we can get into the habit of going longer between meals by eating our last meal of the day earlier and our first meal of the day later once or twice a week (at random) this extends the opportunity for ketone burning (we should be burning ketones at night) and improves mitochondrial biogenesis, that means we replace older dysfunctional mitochondria with new fully functional mitochondria which should improve fat burning.

It's also worth thinking about methionine and choline deficiency and it's role in insulin resistance and inflammation
and
magnesium deficiency in type 2 diabetes

Insulin resistance happens largely from a diet of refined carbohydrates which cause high blood sugar level and insulin level. Therefore, the key is to convert to a diet of complex carbohydrate and high fiber plus regular exercise to burn off the triglyceride build up from high blood sugar.

I agree that refined carbs are driving insulin, that's driving fat storage that driving inflammation but we have to understand that there are other pro inflammatory forces that are adding to the damaging effects.
While it's the exception to the rule it is possible to be healthy and overweight. I'm not recommending it, carrying around excess weight is not a smart idea, but the damage comes from having no anti-inflammatory reserves.
I've talked a bit about this on this post If we can have adequate magnesium, omega 3, vitamin D3 reserves and are able to produce reasonable levels of melatonin before we go to sleep so have the ability to repair inflammatory damage while we sleep we can delay the onset of diabetes/Alzhiemer's etc.

Swapping from omega 6 (pro inflammatory seed oils like corn/soy/sunflower/safflower etc) to coconut oil or olive oil enables omega 3 ratio to improve and thus enhance our ability to resolve inflammation. The coconut oil in particular also improves metabolic flexibility so we are better able to burn ketones so always have the protection from a reserve fuel supply to protect brain and enhance mitochondrial function.