14 Ways To Reduce Joint Pain With Diabetes

14 Ways to Reduce Joint Pain With Diabetes

Diabetes can damage joints, making life and movement much harder. How does this happen, and what can we do about it? A lot.
“Without properly functioning joints, our bodies would be unable to bend, flex, or even move,” says Sheri Colberg, PhD, author of The Diabetic Athlete, The 7 Step Diabetes Fitness Plan, and other books.
Joint pain is often called “arthritis.” “A joint is wherever two bones come together,” Colberg writes. The bones are held in place by ligaments, which attach bones to each other, and by tendons, which attach bones to the muscles that move them.
The ends of the bones are padded with cartilage, a whitish gel made from collagen, proteins, fiber, and water. Cartilage allows bones to move on each other without being damaged.
Joint cartilage can be damaged by injuries or by wear and tear with hard use. “Aging alone can lead to some loss of [the] cartilage layer in knee, hip, and other joints,” says Colberg “but having diabetes potentially speeds up damage to joint surfaces.”
Sometimes extra glucose sticks to the surfaces of joints, gumming up their movement. This stickiness interferes with movement and leads to wear-and-tear injury.
High glucose levels also thicken and degrade the collagen itself. This is bad because tendons and ligaments are also largely made from collagen.
Reduced flexibility of joints leads to stiffness, greater risk of physical injury, and falls. People with joint damage may reduce their physical activity due to discomfort and fear of falling. Reduced activity promotes heart disease and insulin resistance.
Here are 14 Continue reading

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Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes?

Just in case you need another reason to cut back on junk food, it now turns out that Alzheimer’s could well be a form of diet-induced diabetes. That’s the bad news. The good news is that laying off soda, doughnuts, processed meats and fries could allow you to keep your mind intact until your body fails you.
We used to think there were two types of diabetes: the type you’re born with (Type 1) and the type you “get.” That’s called Type 2, and was called “adult onset” until it started ravaging kids. Type 2 is brought about by a combination of factors, including overeating, American-style.
The idea that Alzheimer’s might be Type 3 diabetes has been around since 2005, but the connection between poor diet and Alzheimer’s is becoming more convincing, as summarized in a cover story in New Scientist entitled “Food for Thought: What You Eat May Be Killing Your Brain.” (The graphic — a chocolate brain with a huge piece missing — is creepy. But for the record: chocolate is not the enemy.)
The studies [1] are increasingly persuasive, and unsurprising when you understand the role of insulin in the body. So, a brief lesson.
We all need insulin: in non-diabetics, it’s released to help cells take in the blood sugar (glucose) they need for energy. But the cells can hold only so much; excess sugar is first stored as glycogen, and — when there’s enough of that — as fat. (Blood sugar doesn’t come only from sugar, but from carbohydrates of all kinds; easily digested carbohydrates flood the bloodstream with sugar.) Insulin not only keeps the blood vessels tha Continue reading

Coding Diabetes: Time to Look at the Coding Guidelines Again

November is National Diabetes Awareness Month, prompting coders to review the coding guidelines for this disease suffered by more than 10.9 million U.S. residents.
During November, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is raising awareness about diabetes, diabetic eye disease, the importance of early disease detection, and related preventive health services covered by Medicare. According to the CMS website, diabetes can lead to severe complications such as heart disease, stroke, vision loss, kidney disease, nerve damage, and amputation, among others, and it’s a significant risk factor for developing glaucoma. People with diabetes are more susceptible to many other illnesses such as pneumonia and influenza and are more likely to die from these than people who do not have diabetes. Among U.S. residents 65 years and older, 10.9 million (26.9 percent) had diabetes in 2010. Currently, 3.6 million Americans 40 and older suffer from diabetic eye disease. Education and early detection are major components to combating this disease.
Let’s take a look at the coding guidelines for diabetes to ensure that we accurately select and capture the ICD-10-CM code(s) for this disease. As all health information management (HIM) coding professionals know (or should know), the ICD-10-CM Official Coding and Reporting Guidelines have been approved by the four organizations that make up the Cooperating Parties for ICD-10: the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and Na Continue reading

Long daytime naps are 'warning sign' for type-2 diabetes

Napping for more than an hour during the day could be a warning sign for type-2 diabetes, Japanese researchers suggest.
They found the link after analysing observational studies involving more than 300,000 people.
UK experts said people with long-term illnesses and undiagnosed diabetes often felt tired during the day.
But they said there was no evidence that napping caused or increased the risk of diabetes.
The large study, carried out by scientists at the University of Tokyo, is being presented at a meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Munich.
Their research found there was a link between long daytime naps of more than 60 minutes and a 45% increased risk of type-2 diabetes, compared with no daytime napping - but there was no link with naps of less than 40 minutes.
Sleeping patterns
The researchers said long naps could be a result of disturbed sleep at night, potentially caused by sleep apnoea.
And this sleeping disorder could increase the risk of heart attacks, stroke, cardiovascular problems and other metabolic disorders, including type-2 diabetes.
Sleep deprivation, caused by work or social life patterns, could also lead to increased appetite, which could increase the risk of type-2 diabetes.
But it was also possible that people who were less healthy or in the early stages of diabetes were more likely to nap for longer during the day.
Shorter naps, in contrast, were more likely to increase alertness and motor skills, the authors said.
'Early warning sign'
Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, said there w Continue reading

What Exactly is Type 3 Diabetes?

According to Dr. Mark Hyman, a well-known physician/author who focuses on diabetes, heart disease and diet, “10% of 65 year olds, 25% of 75 year olds and 50% of 85 year olds will develop dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.” Along with diabetes and obesity, it is a global epidemic. Alzheimer’s is the top form of dementia and now the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Alzheimer’s is a brain disease that is progressive, often starts with forgetfulness and confusion, in which the brain’s nerve cells degenerate. It can then affect personalities, moods and language leading to behavior issues in the patient. It is not considered “natural aging.” There is gene involvement but only 5% of cases are directly related to genes. The main causes seem to involve oxidative stress as well as systemic inflammation. Some of it is aging but it also encompasses lifestyle which contributes to brain health. “The medical community has yet to identify a specific cause and there is no effective long term treatment.”
Scientists have been referring to Alzheimer’s as type 3 diabetes since 2005 since “people with type 2 diabetes are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s.” The connection seems to be insulin resistance which also relates to lifestyle. According to The Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology “currently there is rapid growth pointing toward insulin resistance as mediators of Alzheimer’s neuro-degeneration.” Experts at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health conclude that insulin resistance can be reduced by “limiting added sugars, refine Continue reading