Tag: Diabetes

Getting out of your routine is part of the fun of vacation and traveling. But don’t forget your medications and your care routine, especially if you have diabetes, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says.
Experts at the federal agency, part of the National Institutes of health, say that travel factors such as meals away from home, a change in physical activity, and different time zones can affect your management of your conditions.

If you or a loved one have been recently diagnosed with diabetes, you know that the nutrition guidelines for diabetics can seem overwhelming at times. And following the guidelines, which include carbohydrate counting, is crucial to a diabetic’s health.

Here, from the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, part of the National Institutes of Health, is an easy-to-understand explanation of carbohydrate counting. This tool for planning meals will help you keep track of the amount of carbs you’re eating each day, and whether you’re in goal range.

Scientists from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered the sequence of early cellular responses that can ultimately lead to obesity-induced insulin resistance and diabetes.
The cells respond, the investigators said, to a high-fat diet.

“We’ve described the etiology [cause] of obesity-related diabetes. We’ve pinpointed the steps, the way the whole thing happens,” said Jerrold M. Olefsky, MD, associate dean for Scientific Affairs and Distinguished Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego.

FROM THE MAYO CLINIC

Early symptoms of diabetes, especially type 2 diabetes, can be subtle or seemingly harmless — if you have symptoms at all. Over time, however, you may develop diabetes complications, even if you haven’t had diabetes symptoms.

In the United States alone, nearly 7 million people have undiagnosed diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. But you don’t need to become a statistic. Understanding possible diabetes symptoms can lead to early diagnosis and treatment — and a lifetime of better health.

Researchers have developed a method for measuring glucose concentrations in saliva, and they say it would be a significant improvement in managing diabetes.

The scientists, from Brown University, devised a new biochip sensor that measures blood sugar levels in saliva rather than blood.

By Ginger Vieira

Diabetes isn’t easy, and having to prick your finger day in and day out to check your blood sugar can be grating. Even though this task takes up about a combined 120 seconds of our day, it’s a tedious responsibility that comes with “good” or “bad” news depending on whatever our blood sugar is. After a while, who could blame you for being sick of it, for forgetting to do it, or for wanting to forget you have diabetes altogether?

Dipping blood sugars cause surprisingly irregular heart rhythms in diabetics and the dangerous overnight low glucose levels often go undetected. That is the finding of research led by Professor Simon Heller at the University of Sheffield in the UK. A release from the university explains that this discovery sheds important new light on the 'Dead in Bed' syndrome in which people without any history of long-term complications die suddenly from the disease.

Weight loss and control of blood sugar can reduce the risk of complications in patients with diabetes but paring off the pounds is difficult for many people. Now a randomized controlled trial of obese adults with type 2 diabetes done at the  University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis suggests that participants enrolled in a community-based structured weight loss program are able to shed more of their excess avoir dupois, improve blood sugar control, and reduce or even eliminate insulin use.

Indiana University researchers have detected new early-warning signs of the potential loss of sight associated with diabetes. This discovery could have far-reaching implications for the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic retinopathy, potentially impacting the care of over 25 million Americans. The study was published in April 2014 in the journal Biomedical Optics Express.

Using the high altitude of Mount Everest, scientists have expanded our understanding of how low oxygen levels in the body are linked with Type II diabetes.

The research, led by investigators from the University of Southampton in the UK, was published in the journal PLOS One.  

Scientists thought they basically knew how the most common drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes worked, but a new study from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) reveals unexpected new aspects of the process. These findings could eventually lead to more potent anti-diabetic drugs with fewer serious side effects. The study was published in the April 7th 2014 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

Wounds may heal more quickly if exposed to low-intensity vibration, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago who published their study online in April 2014 in the journal PLOS One.

The finding, based on laboratory work with mice, may hold promise for the 18 million Americans who have type 2 diabetes, and especially the quarter of them who will eventually suffer from foot ulcers. Their wounds tend to heal slowly and can become chronic or worsen rapidly.

Researchers have found that a molecule may help control high blood sugar, and the discovery could lead to new targeted therapies for 25 million Americans who have type 2 diabetes.

Scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center showed that lipid molecules called phosphatidic acids enhance glucose production in the liver. So inhibiting the production of phosphatidic acids could do the opposite, helping to control blood sugar.

The scent of a human alerts deer to a hunter’s presence so scientists developed sprays for suppressing the telltale odor. Now, in an unexpected twist, researchers at Mississippi State University have discovered that the work of those scientists could help develop an electronic device to do the work of “diabetes alert dogs”. The team presented the findings at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in March 2014 in Dallas.

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A tissue repair drug could help heal dangerous foot ulcers in diabetics, according to a new study.

The study, accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), involved two groups of people with who had the ulcers.