Are You Staying Informed With New Diabetes Treatments?

Poll finds less than half of health care professionals aware of newest drug up for FDA approval.
By Steve Freed, R.Ph., Diabetes Educator, Publisher
In the past two years, more than 30 medications have come to the market, and more than 475 additional diabetes drugs are in the works to get approved.
To test the knowledge of endocrinologists, 149 endocrinologists responded to a survey about a new drug that the FDA is looking to approve shortly. The drug, ertugliflozin, met the primary outcomes in two year-long phase 3 trials, VERTIS SU and VERTIS SITA2 and only 45% of the physicians said they had heard of the drug. Of those, 20% knew it only by name and only 5% were “very familiar” with it.
Ertugliflozin is an investigational oral sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT-2) inhibitor aimed at improving glycemic control in adults. It is expected to be approved before the end of the year, which would make it the fourth drug in its class to market.
Respondents were asked, after reading the clinical trial data provided about the drug and assuming ertugliflozin is approved and performs as described, how long they thought it would take for them to start prescribing. Only 7% answered that they would start prescribing within the first week, another 18% said they would prescribe it in the first month, and nearly half (46%) said they would prescribe it within 2 to 6 months. Just more than 1 in 5 (21%) said they would likely wait at least 9 months before prescribing.
Among the 113 endocrinologists who anticipated prescribing ertugliflozin, the main reason given was efficacy (58% answer Continue reading

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How Fresno Man Started Biking and Reversed Type 2 Diabetes

FRESNO — Jaime Rangel holds a bike tire and begins checking with his hands for thorns and other sharp objects that might be puncturing the tire’s rubber tread. His fingers, stained with black patches of oil, move quickly and seamlessly. He’s done this type of work dozens of times before.
All around him, a steady stream of kids line up to get their bikes’ flat tires and faulty brakes fixed at this free event at a park in southeast Fresno.
The free bike repairs are a preamble to the Cumbia Ride, a group bike ride with Latin American dance music started last year by Fresno’s Cultiva la Salud to promote biking and a healthier lifestyle among Latino families.
Rangel, 26, says he’s here fixing bikes because he relates to many of the young riders at the event — kids who can’t afford to have their bikes repaired.
“When I was a kid, no one showed me how to fix a bike,” he says. “My mom never took me to a bike shop because we grew up low income, so everything I had to learn from scratch.”
Rangel makes a point of showing those skills to the kids and parents lingering by their bikes. He wants young people and adults, especially in working-class neighborhoods like southeast Fresno, to be able to bike more to fend off chronic illnesses such as diabetes.
Rangel speaks from personal experience.
Facing Type 2 Diabetes as a Teen
Rangel was just 14 and living with his family in Los Angeles when he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Obesity and a sedentary lifestyle are risk factors for the illness. While he was tall — 6-foot-1 — he weighed 260 pounds.
It’s been Continue reading

Diabetes at Work: Your Rights and Benefits

By Isabel Chin, Lynn Kennedy, and Jeemin Kwon
Breaking down employer-based health insurance, employee health benefits, and employee rights for people with diabetes
The most common type of health insurance coverage in the US is employer-based insurance, covering almost 50% of all Americans in 2015. Despite its prominence, employer-based health insurance can be challenging to navigate, and living with diabetes makes the process of understanding and accessing employee health benefits like insurance all the more critical. This guide breaks down employer-based insurance, employee health benefits, and the rights of people with diabetes in the workplace.
We hope this guide helps you better understand employer-based insurance, maximize your health through work benefits, and know and protect your workplace rights as a person with diabetes.
In this article, you can read about (click a particular section to jump right to it!):
What to do to maintain employer-based health insurance after a major life event like losing a job
Employer-Based Health Insurance: The Basics
Currently, all US employers with over 50 full-time employees are required to provide health insurance that meets certain standards of affordability otherwise they face a fine. While small businesses are not required to offer health insurance to their employees, many companies will so they can take advantage of tax credits.
It is important to understand what coverage and health benefits your employer offers in order to choose the right insurance plan for you. Job-based health plans are required to provide a “Summary of Be Continue reading

Top 5 natural substances that could cure type 1 diabetes

(NaturalNews) While type 1 diabetes is not as common as type 2 diabetes, it can be just as devastating. Unlike type 2, which is largely caused by weight gain, poor nutrition, lack of exercise and other controllable risk factors, type 1 diabetes is considered to be an autoimmune disorder and a person is born with it. The beta cells in the pancreas of a type 1 diabetic are not able to manufacture the insulin to control blood sugars in the body. As a result, blood sugars can get dangerously high or low - and quickly. Traditionally, type 1 diabetes is controlled with a combination of insulin injections or an insulin pump as well as careful counting of carbohydrates in regards to activity levels. However, this can be an extremely difficult way to live, especially for children. There, are, however, natural substances which have the potential to treat this condition. Read on to find out more.
Arginine
Arginine is an amino acid and is available in most health food stores as a nutritional supplement. In a 2007 study, it was found that regular use of arginine in laboratory animals was able to stimulate the pancreas to produce beta cells, the special kind of pancreatic cells which produce insulin.
Goldenseal
Goldenseal is an herb with a long history of medicinal use both in the East and the West. Modern science believes that part of its value as a treatment lies in the fact that it contains berberine, a bioactive compound. Berberine has been shown in studies on laboratory animals to, like arginine, stimulate the production of the pancreatic beta cells which the body needs to make insu Continue reading

Diabetes At Work: The Patient’s Rights and Benefits

A person cannot be denied health care coverage and benefits because they have diabetes prior to employment.
In the U.S., most people who are employed have health insurance coverage provided by their employer directly from their own job or through family members such as a spouse or parent. However, not all employers offer health insurance to their employees. Small companies are not required to provide insurance to their employees but medium size and large companies that have 50 or more full-time employees must provide their employees with affordable health care coverage, failure of which will attract heavy fines. Health insurance plans offered by the employer involve both employer and employee premium contributions with the employee’s contribution being paid on a pre-tax basis.
Understanding insurance is challenging but also very crucial especially for people living with diabetes. Companies offer different options of healthcare coverage plans and are required to provide a summary of benefits and coverage (SBC). This summary lists information on coverage and costs such as deductibles, out-of-pocket limits, co-pays, and co-insurance. Health insurance providers are required to give their employees an SBC during their first enrollment and at the beginning of each plan year, but employees can request an SBC from their provider at any time from which they have seven days to provide it.
Although an SBC is useful, it does not show if specific products are covered. However, one can always call the health insurance helpline to determine which medications and devices are covered by s Continue reading