At 40, A Surprising Diagnosis: Latent Autoimmune Diabetes In Adults

At 40, a Surprising Diagnosis: Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults

He did everything right, but Manny Hernandez’s blood sugar levels wouldn’t settle down. Then tests showed he had LADA, a type of diabetes he’d never heard of.
The numbers just didn’t make sense.
Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2002, Manny Hernandez tackled it with everything he had. “I switched to a super-healthy, low-carb diet. I trained for my first half-marathon. I lost 25 pounds. I took my medication faithfully. I was the healthiest I’d ever been. But my blood sugar wouldn’t stay in an optimal range.”
Hernandez kept exercising, though more moderately, after running the Valley of the Sun Marathon in Phoenix, AZ, in early 2003. He tried “pretty much every metformin-based drug combination and dose on the market.” Yet his fasting blood sugar levels wouldn’t drop below 150. “Something wasn’t normal,” he says.
Perplexed, his family doctor sent him to an endocrinologist who measured levels of diabetes autoimmune antibodies and C-peptide (a substance that correlates with insulin levels) in his blood.
The results: Hernandez didn't have type 2 diabetes at all. He had LADA – Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults. His immune system was slowly attacking his insulin-producing beta cells. And his insulin levels were low enough that he needed daily insulin shots.
Hernandez wasn’t alone. An estimated one in ten people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes actually have LADA. This form of diabetes is like slow-moving type 1. But it’s usually mistaken for type 2 because it happens in adulthood, and doesn’t require insulin right away. Like type 2s, people with Continue reading

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6 Ways to Connect Better with Your Spouse if You Have Diabetes

Your marriage can be a “secret weapon” that supports your efforts to take care of your diabetes, research shows. For instance, in one 2015 study of 129 people with type 2 diabetes, researchers from the University of California, Irvine, found that having a supportive spouse helped keep blood sugar from soaring to unhealthy levels in those whose diabetes was most affected by stress. And in a 2001 study from the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center of 78 people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, those who were the happiest with their marriage were also the most satisfied with the way they were handling their diabetes.
Your spouse only wants the best for you, of course. But too often, stress , worry, misunderstandings and even unintended sabotage – can get in the way. These strategies can help you get the support you need from your spouse and defuse tensions, so the two of you can work together to keep your diabetes under control:
#1. Share a goal that’s bigger than diabetes. Talk about important future dreams and goals you can reach if you’re both healthy. A shared vision can keep you both feeling inspired, according to a 2009 Pennsylvania State University study of 30 people with diabetes and their spouses. Many said that finding a motivation that was important to both of them kept them exercising, for example. “I have one goal in life and that is to have our 50th wedding anniversary,” one volunteer said, noting that the goal kept both partners exercising regularly. “So I do not care what happens in between but we have to get to that goal.” Anoth Continue reading

Google's Research In Artificial Intelligence Helps In Preventing Blindness Caused by Diabetes

One of the principal causes of blindness is Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), a medical condition in which damage occurs to the retina due to diabetes. According to the United States National Library of Diabetes, more than 40 percent of Americans diagnosed with diabetes have some stage of Diabetic Retinopathy. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that are 415 million diabetic patients worldwide have the risk of DR.
Ophthalmologists diagnose the diabetic eye disease by examining the pictures of the back of the eye for lesions. The severity is identified by the presence of lesions that indicate bleeding and fluid leakage in the eye. Only experienced doctors and specialists can scan and interpret these pictures. There is an acute shortage of qualified ophthalmologists that can diagnose diabetic eye, which puts many patients at the risk of losing their eyesight.
Google Brain, the research team within Google that focuses on the application of AI, has collaborated with doctors in India and US to help them diagnose DR. The team has collected over 128,000 images that were each evaluated by 3-7 ophthalmologists from a panel of 54 ophthalmologists. These images were fed to a deep learning algorithm for creating a model to detect Diabetic Retinopathy. The performance of the algorithm was tested on two different datasets totaling to 12,000 images.
The predictions from Google Brain’s neural network algorithm were so close that it is considered to be on par with the diagnosis of experienced ophthalmologists. The application of Machine Learning (ML) in Diabetic Retinopathy is a brea Continue reading

Understanding Diabetes

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A condition that affects how your body uses energy in the form of glucose from food, diabetes can be successfully managed through proper self-monitoring, medication and lifestyle changes. People with diabetes have a high level of glucose in their blood, which can be caused by either too little insulin being produced by the pancreas or the body not accepting or using the insulin it produces, or a combination of both.
People with diabetes need to keep their blood sugar levels within a healthy range. Blood sugar levels are controlled through diet, physical activity and, for some people, a combination of medication and insulin injections.
Understanding Insulin
Insulin is a hormone your cells need to store and use energy from food, and it is responsible for getting glucose into your cells. If you have diabetes, insulin is not able to do its job. Meaning, glucose is unable to get into cells, which causes it to build up in your blood. High levels of glucose then circulate through the body, damaging cells along the way.
Types of Diabetes
Type 1 Diabetes: An autoimmune disease in which the pancreas cannot make insulin or makes very little. Type 1 diabetes often begins in childhood (it was previously known as "juvenile diabetes"), and the onset is sudden. People with Type 1 diabetes need daily insulin injections or an insulin pump. Just 5% of people with diabetes have Type 1 diabetes, which cannot be prevented through diet or lifestyle.
Type 2 Diabetes: A chronic disease in which the pancreas makes insulin, but it does not make enough or the body doesn't use the Continue reading

10 Indian Foods for Type 2 Diabetes Prevention and Control

Type 2 Diabetes or Diabetes mellitus is one such lifestyle condition which can be easily managed with a good diabetic diet and weight loss. In this blog, we present to you the top 10 best foods for diabetics that one must include in the diet.
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A Diabetes Diet plays a crucial role in dealing with the disease. Hence it is very important to know which foods can help. A typical diet plan for type 2 diabetes should contain healthy fruits and veggies. However, there are certain superfoods like Quinoa, Oats, Bitter Gourd, legumes which are not that popular but can greatly help managing diabetes.
10 Superfoods for Type 2 Diabetes patients
Fenugreek Seeds
Psyllium Seeds
Millets
Bitter gourd
Oats
Seeds
Brown rice
Quinoa
Cinnamon
Legumes
We have compiled the list of 10 superfoods for Type 2 Diabetes management in the video below.
1. Fenugreek Seeds
Fenugreek seeds or methi seeds are one of the top superfoods for diabetes mellitus prevention and control. Studies have found that fenugreek helps lower the blood sugar by affecting the rate of digestion of starch and other carbs. In addition, several clinical trials seem to have shown methi seeds to reduce the metabolic conditions seen commonly in diabetes mellitus. A study even found that 100 grams of fenugreek seeds seemed to lower the fasting blood sugar levels.
2. Psyllium Seeds
Psyllium husk is one the major foods for diabetes that you can incorporate in the diet. In the digestive system, viscous f Continue reading