I was reminded tonight of the wondrous things that can come from intimate conversations.   As part of the Sports and Diabetes Group Northwest, we have a monthly happy hour for people who would like to get together between workshops to talk shop and spend time being part of the majority.  Tonight, we met for pizza and beer and all things carbohydrate.  There were about nine of us gathered and spent a chunk of time catching up on each other’s lives or asking the preliminary small-talk questions to get acquainted with the...

As I have previously discussed, I am participating in the Protégé Encore study, which is an anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody clinical trial that is trying to prove the effectiveness of an investigational drug called teplizumab.  We all know that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition where autoantibodies are attacking and killing off the body’s pancreatic beta cells.  Among other things, beta cells produce insulin, so damaged beta cells lead to decreased levels of insulin production… which leads to a diabetes diagnosis. ...

Lady MacBeth washed her hands after she’d bloodied them.  Diabetics should wash before. Having clean hands is always a smart idea and it’s a particularly good idea to wash up before  you check your blood sugar.   This doesn’t have to do with bacteria or risk of infection since it’s very rare to get an infection at a lancing site, but rather with getting a more accurate blood glucose reading.  We almost all come in contact with sugar during the day, especially those of us who are serving cookies and milk...

A new study, published online by PLoS Medicine, estimates that smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, and obesity currently reduce life expectancy in the U.S. by 4.9 years in men and 4.1 years in women. It is the first study to look at the effects of those four preventable risk factors on life expectancy in the whole nation. The researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), in collaboration with researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington,...

Diabetes Care reports on a new study which shows vinegar reduces post-meal hyperglycemia in type 1 diabetics.  While previous studies have shown that vinegar improves insulin sensitivity in healthy or insulin-resistant subjects, information on the effect of vinegar in type 1 diabetes has been absent. Subjects in the study, tested under similar metabolic conditions, were randomly assigned to consume vinegar or placebo five minutes before a meal composed of bread, cheese, turkey ham, orange juice, butter, and a cereal bar (566 kcal;...

Strictly controlling blood glucose levels in type 2 diabetics with long-term, serious coexisting health problems such as heart disease and hypertension does not lower their risk of a heart attack or stroke, according to a study conducted at UC Irvine Health Policy Research Institute by Dr. Sheldon Greenfield and Sherrie Kaplan. Researchers found, however, that firm glucose control — defined as keeping hemoglobin levels, or A1C, below 7 percent — may reduce cardiovascular issues for diabetics with fewer and less severe health problems. The...

Whether flesh and blood or plastic and silicon; the cure for late stage diabetics will be a new pancreas. How to build a mechanical version is the question addressed in a recent review by M. Hoshino and colleagues. We refer to a fully automated system as a closed loop system. The goal would be for every thing from glucose sensing to insulin administration to be automated, requiring little if any input from the user. The first issue is detecting blood glucose and then figuring out what is going on. To do this we need a glucose sensor....

I’ve had type 2 diabetes for 12 years. I’m 62 and slightly overweight.

Glucose, that innocuous sweet molecule, is reactive. Chemically, what happens is that glucose has a slight reducing capacity (i.e. the capacity to accept electrons) and it is quite happy to accept electrons from the epsilon amino group of the amino acid, lysine. Lysine is found in virtually every protein and when that electron is shared it creates an irreversible chemical bond between the glucose and the protein. The protein has become glycosylated and your diabetes complications have begun. Clinically, glycosylation is a very useful...

Freedom Meditech says it has successfully tested a new way to measure blood sugar levels via the eyes, according to a company press release. It hopes this method will provide a painless way to test blood sugar and one day replace finger sticks. The study is in the pre-clinical stage and has so far only been tested on rabbits. The eye-scanning technology produces blood sugar readings in five minutes.  Though slower, this method appears to be more accurate than current blood glucose monitors, which have an estimated mean error rate...