Highlights
- A small randomized trial tested hand heating (with and without negative pressure) in adults with high blood sugar.
- The hand-heating device used in the study was the AVACEN 100, operated in different modes (with and without negative pressure).
- In people with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), hand heating after a glucose drink helped reduce the overall post-drink blood sugar exposure in people with type 2 diabetes.
- The effect was stronger when heating was combined with negative pressure on the hand.
What did the researchers do?
Researchers ran a double-blind, randomized, crossover trial with 20 adults who had elevated fasting blood sugar. Participants were divided into two groups:
- Prediabetes
- Type 2 diabetes (T2DM)
The AVACEN 100 device was used to deliver the hand-heating intervention. Each person completed three separate sessions on different days:
- Hand Heating + Negative Pressure (HV) – AVACEN 100 used with vacuum
- Hand Heating Only (HO) – AVACEN 100 used without vacuum
- Sham device (control) – device present but without active heating/negative pressure
In every session, participants drank a standard glucose drink. Over the next two hours, the researchers:
- Checked blood sugar at repeated time points
- Looked at the highest value reached (peak blood sugar)
- Calculated overall post-drink exposure, which you can think of as: How high did blood sugar go, and for how long did it stay up?
They also measured tympanic temperature (in the ear) to see if body temperature changed.
What did they find?
Prediabetes
For participants with prediabetes, all three sessions (HV, HO, sham) looked very similar:
- Blood sugar curves overlapped
- Peak values and total post-drink exposure were about the same
In this small group, using the AVACEN 100 did not meaningfully change post-drink blood sugar under the tested conditions.
Type 2 Diabetes
For participants with type 2 diabetes, the pattern was different:
- When the researchers looked at total post-drink blood sugar load, there was a clear effect of condition.
- Compared with the sham session:
- HV (AVACEN 100 with heat + negative pressure) reduced overall post-drink blood sugar by about 26%.
- HO (AVACEN 100 with heat only) reduced it by about 11%.
- When HV and HO were compared directly, HV produced an additional ~18% reduction in total post-drink blood sugar.
Ear temperature barely changed (≤ 0.1 °C), showing that this was not a whole-body heating effect.
In simple terms: In people with type 2 diabetes, hand heating — especially with negative pressure — reduced the total post-drink blood sugar exposure compared with the control session. There was also a tendency toward lower peak blood sugar, but results for peak were not statistically definitive.
Why might this matter?
For people living with type 2 diabetes, keeping blood sugar from spiking too high after meals is a daily challenge. Medication, nutrition, physical activity, and sleep are still the foundations of care — but researchers are also looking at non-drug approaches that might help.
This study suggests:
- Localized hand heating with the AVACEN 100 can acutely improve how the body handles a glucose load in T2DM under the tested conditions.
- Adding negative pressure appears to enhance the effect, possibly by further improving blood flow and microcirculation in the heated hand.
- Because core body temperature did not rise, the effect is likely localized, not a full-body heat response.
Figure 1. Change in total post-drink blood sugar in the type 2 diabetes group. Bars show how much total blood sugar after the drink differed from the control session. Negative values indicate lower blood sugar; Heat Only reduced it by about 11%, and Heat + Negative Pressure by about 26%, compared with control.
Takeaway
In this randomized crossover study, the AVACEN 100, used to heat the hand (with and without negative pressure), lowered post-drink blood sugar exposure in people with type 2 diabetes, but not in those with prediabetes. The effect seems to come from local changes rather than whole-body warming.
More research is needed, but this work opens an intriguing possibility: targeted hand heating with devices like the AVACEN 100 as one more tool to investigate in the broader field of metabolic health.