The Diabetes Blog

If you are planning to conceive or are pregnant, then you’d better get your blood sugar levels tested. According to a research conducted by Kaiser Permanente, a health care provider of California , it was found that the number of pregnant women who were diabetic prior to pregnancy has increased twofold in the last seven years.

Though the sample population was from Southern California, the results hold true for the pregnant population of the entire United States. This is a matter of great concern because it implies a lot of health complications for both the mother and the baby. The study was published in Diabetics Care, a journal of American Diabetes Association (the research funding body).

A breakthorough concept in bandages has surfaced on the horizon which is boon for diabetics. HealFast is a bandage designed by Donn Koh that uses electric fields to accelerate the healing process and prevent further infection in the surrounding tissues.

Healfast is a simple solution to counter the wounds inflicted by pressure sores and chronic ulcers in diabetics. Applying this bandage is a simple task. Just place this bandage on the wound and peel off the protective covering, and the bandage is ready for action. When a person applies this bandage by pressing it down on his wounds, an electric charge is activated and results in a weak electric field which accelerates the healing process and prevents the surrounding tissues from getting infected.

I find this concept very helpful because even a small cut or scratch can spell disaster for a diabetic. HealFast’s amazing power can arm the diabetics with an increased sense of security.

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After establishing itself as a heart-friendly drink, read wine is now once again ready to be there on your dining table; this time as an antidote to diabetes.

Stroke may occur at any time and most of the time it goes undetected around the time within which something could have been done. The patients who suffered a stroke always showed disabilities in speech and movement of limbs and other parts, facial palsy, and lowered vision.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine believe it may be possible to develop a breath analysis test to monitor blood sugar.

Which exercise would you choose to bring your diabetes under control- resistance training or aerobics? Don’t fall amid these two but simply go for both, as doing this would bring greater results!

When we reach the advanced stage of any disease we regret having not taken precautions from the beginning. Now diabetes is found among people of all ages starting with toddlers to nonagenarians. “UCLA’s doctor Simin Liu believes he can detect the disease years before current tests. The key is a set of molecules called inflammatory markers”.

Millions of people are suffering from type 2 diabetes world wide and the number of people dying due to cardiovascular diseases and strokes is equally high among the diabetics.

Booming economy has brought India on the stage where it vies with countries like China and the US. Well, on one issue, it is set to outshine these rivals even! Thanks to the rising graphs of diabetes in India - set to touch 57-mn mark by 2025, leaving behind big stalwarts like China and the US even. The root cause of the problem seems to be lying in the new chic of “eating more and taking less exercise”.

If you are a would-be-mother and have developed diabetes, then keep an eye on it! It may prove fatal for your child! – as your diabetes can eventually risk his health. If you are a diabetic during pregnancy, you may give birth to a child more vulnerable to developing obesity.

And, it’s a known fact that obesity is a major culprit behind developing diabetes at later life. Childhood obesity risk rises in tandem with a pregnant woman’s blood sugar level!

While on one hand, it is the fact that untreated gestational diabetes nearly doubles the risk of obesity in a child aging from 5 to 7, on the other, it is also proved that timely treatment of a pregnant mom’s diabetes can essentially eliminate the risk.

And it is to the extend like those pregnant mothers with normal blood sugar levels!

Since, gestational diabetes is found to affect up to 8 percent of pregnant women each year in the United States, such preventive aftereffects should be considered seriously.

What are needed at the roots, are awareness and timely diagnosis and treatment of would-be-mom’s diabetes.

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If you are heart patient or have ever incurred heart attack, so may be another health threat in the form of diabetes is not far away. Credit to bring out this assumption goes to the collaborative efforts made by researchers from Harvard Medical School and Italy.

During the course of study that followed around 8,291 Italian patients, having sustained a heart attack within the previous three months, experts came out with such findings. As per the conclusion, patients with heart attack were 4.5 times more likely to develop diabetes. And shockingly, such patients were 15 times more likely to develop a pre-diabetes condition known as Impaired Fasting Glucose (IFG). Factors like older age, use of beta-blockers, diuretic use, higher blood pressure, inactive lifestyle were also associated with new onset-diabetes or IFG.

With this revelation, a new debate has been kicked off, stressing the need of intensive study over this correlation.

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Do you know 20.8 million children and adults in the United States are diabetic?

A diabetic would know well, how it feels when first diagnosed with the disease – at least sure of the fact that he has reached a point of no return in its onset. Today, there are 20.8 million children and adults — i.e. 7% of the population — in the United States alone are suffering from diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association.

And the most unfortunate part is that, while an estimated 14.6 million have been diagnosed, 6.2 million people – i.e. nearly one-third — are unaware that they are surviving with the disease.

But, here is a good news for the diabetics. The disease is no more ‘a point of no return reaching’ thing. Researchers have uncovered a process that reveals the mystery how the body’s metabolism in a diabetic state after only relatively limited exposure to high glucose levels can be locked!

The Dr Antonio Ceriello Warwick-led research team reveals that the damage in diabetic state seems to be done in a process — called glycation. This is how the team explains its findings:

It is when early on in a period of high glucose levels glucose sugar molecules are able to bind to proteins in the mitochondria of cells (the parts of cells governing the production and regulation of energy). This persists even if glucose levels later fall to normal. This inhibits and distorts the mitochondria’s normal function and results in an overabundance of the production of free radicals (or Reactive Oxygen Species – ROS) which cause oxidation and thus continued diabetic complications.

To avoid complication in diabetes, a very early tight control of glucose levels is needed is the key to it. Nevertheless, the control needs to be supplemented with the use of antioxidant agents, which can help mitigate the complications- progression.

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When it comes to diabetes, white kids are hit hardest; claiming this, a new population-based study shows that type 1 diabetes is more prevalent in white kids than those of other races.

According to this study:-

• White kids were more susceptible to type 1 diabetes.

• Among Hispanic and Asian kids, its prevalence was lower but just slightly.

• Kids between 10 to 14 were comparatively more susceptible to type 1 diabetes.

• From gender point of view, girls were found more prone to diabetes than boys.

• Constantly, prevalence of type 2 diabetes among kids was found increasing.

• Prevalence of type 2 diabetes was more in American Indian between the group

After going through these facts, severity of the situation can easily be assessed. Well, it is good to know that there has not been seen much rise in diabetes among kids but to take the fact, which states that around 15,000 kids are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes every year, for granted won’t be right.

Actually, diabetes is quite a serious problem, which is fast raising its hood round the world, taking kids under its fold. Well, a big percentage of experts, believes that sharp rise in obesity among kids is one the of the root causes behind increase in type 1 diabetes among children. More worrying is the fact that type 2 diabetes, which is normally regarded as the disease of adults has fast started foraying into kids too all over the world.

On this base, it won’t be wrong to say that strong measures are required to be taken; otherwise days are not far away when diabetes would emerge as a common health problem among kids, turning their lives into a hell.

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Via: Ivanhoe

With 20.8 million children and adults, i.e. 7% of the US population suffering from diabetes, we are surely living at an “epicenter” of the disease and hence both defiance and despair.

Unfortunately, an estimated only 14.6 million have been diagnosed, with 6.2 million people — nearly one-third – are unaware of their bearing the disease. To add to the prevailing problems, and the increasing trend, the painful medications or ‘jabs’ discourage many diabetics from continuing with the treatment.

But, here is a new solution to the painful anti-diabetic jabs – a new insulin pill!

Ah! So, the pill could mean an end to those painful injections for the UK’s 2 million and US’s 20.8 million diabetics, especially the young children who often fear needles.

Thanks to the Jersey-based company Diabetology for conducting this breakthrough research.

The research claims that a ‘twice-daily’ oral dose of an insulin pill, taken before breakfast and the evening meal can successfully control glucose levels in patients.

This development surely promises a “needle less future” for the diabetics.

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