On Monday, August 9th, the Archives of Internal Medicine published a ten-year study of over ten-thousand individuals that showed that waist circumference, even independent of body mass index (BMI), is directly correlated with higher rates of death. Now, this is hardly new news, but the study, covered as it was by the Washington Post,...

One of the fastest growing epidemics in America, and the world, doesn’t have enough health care providers (HCPS). Not even close. So how are we going to handle the flood of diabetes patients coming at our health care system like a tsunami? Close to 25 million Americans have diabetes, and amazingly, nearly 25 percent don’t...

The diabetic information superhighway has been trafficked lately by news of GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia, and the recent FDA declaration that the once-promising drug may be more dangerous than previously thought, and may substantially increase the risk of heart problems for patients. Concern about new drugs is hardly novel, but amidst...

In my last post I discussed the anatomy of the eye. Keep this in mind as we begin to consider what diabetes does to this anatomy. Remember that the most important aspect of diabetes is high blood sugar. This is the source of all complications that will make life so miserable down the line. The two major issues with glucose, as I have...

Traveling with diabetes is always tough. You’ve got a different schedule, different exercise patterns and, above all, different food. I’m in Klaipeda, Lithuania right now, just starting week two of a three-week bicycle trip through the Baltics — and let me tell you: there’s nothing like Lithuanian cuisine to make...

Yesterday, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Advisory panel assigned to the Avandia case recommended in a mixed vote that the product remain on the market despite concerns the type 2 diabetes drug poses a significant safety threat to patients: 12 voted that Avandia should be withdrawn; 10 voted that its sales should be restricted...

Despite the popularity of “how to” books on transforming our lives we Americans really do not like life-style change. This is one reason there has been such hesitancy in setting up to screen large numbers of people for insulin resistance – the first sign of insipient type 2 diabetes. Previous trials in which pre-diabetic people...

A few months ago I wrote about Eva Saxl, a type 1 diabetic who managed to survive World War II in the Shanghai ghetto by making homemade insulin. After immigrating to the United States, Saxl became a spokeswoman for the American Diabetes Association. During the era in which Saxl lived, there was a serious stigma attached to having diabetes....

Insulin, like all other proteins, must undergo a bit of shaping before it is ready for business. Proteins are really just chains of amino acids (sometimes called polypeptide chains) that are arranged like beads on a string. Incredibly, these polypeptide chains simply fold in upon themselves to form the complex molecular machines that...

According to the International Insulin Foundation’s (IIF) RAPIA study for Vietnam, care for a child with type 1 diabetes equals approximately US $876 per year and that child may have only 7 years to live if local medical care and education don’t improve. In a country where the GDP per capita (with Purchasing Power Parity) stands...