Betalin Aims To End Insulin Injections By Treating Type 1 Diabetes With Cell Transplants

Of the 382 million people who have diabetes, only five to 10 percent have Type 1 Diabetes. However, unlike like Type 2 Diabetes, which can be prevented with regular exercise and a healthy diet, Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease that destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Usually diagnosed in childhood, Type 1 Diabetes is traditionally treated with daily insulin injections, and though some prick-less therapies have surfaced, they have not achieved long-term insulin independence.
But Israeli biotech startup Betalin Therapeutics may change that, making insulin injections a thing of the past.
Functioning as a gatekeeper, insulin is a hormone that enables sugar from consumed food to enter cells in the body. Without insulin, sugar builds up in the bloodstream, where it can cause life-threatening complications. Anyone who has Type 1 Diabetes needs lifelong insulin therapy, administered through daily shots or a pump because insulin typically cannot be taken orally due to interfering stomach enzymes.
SEE ALSO: Israelis, Palestinians Join Forces To Explore Local Flowers To Combat Cancer, Diabetes
However, the problem with both modes of treatment is that patients must monitor their blood sugar levels and administer the correct dose of insulin throughout the day. And even the most vigilant monitoring doesn’t prevent a sudden spike or drop in blood sugar levels. In other words, patients and doctors can only treat Type 1 Diabetes reactively.
Some researchers have been looking for a more proactive and automated approach, namely through transplanting healthy pancreatic Continue reading

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What About Type 1 Diabetes?

You hear a lot about type 2 diabetes on this and other sites in the community. It’s easy to see why: type 2 diabetes is the “lifestyle” diabetes, the preventable one, the one that “doesn’t have to happen” and that you can “fix if you just dial in the food.” All true, for the most part. Whether you’re in the camp that thinks it’s red meat or egg yolks causing it, or fatty liver from excess PUFAs and fructose, the point is that people commonly accept the idea that T2D is preventable and manageable with the right diet and lifestyle. But what about type 1 diabetes? Why don’t we hear so much about it?
First of all, it’s rarer than T2D. For better or for worse, there simply isn’t as large an audience for stuff about type 1 diabetes. Second, type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease. In T1D, the pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin in the body are destroyed by an autoimmune attack. Left untreated without exogenous infusions of insulin, T1D results in severely elevated blood sugar and, eventually, death. Autoimmune diseases are confusing, tricky, and hard to manage. I mean, your body is attacking itself and preventing a completely necessary physiological function – insulin release! It’s not something you want to mess around with. It’s not a subject you can tackle lightly.
And I think that’s why people have steered clear of making any absolute recommendations regarding T1D and Primal or paleo. That said, we can make some general recommendations, I think, that won’t cause many problems and can even help solve some of them (with a doctor� Continue reading

How to Beat Diabetes Burnout

“I felt as if I couldn't do it anymore. So I didn't,” explains Sarah Kaye, a mother of two, now 31 years old, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a preschooler.
Sarah is talking about burnout. Diabetes burnout. The phrase can mean so many different things to anyone who lives with any type of diabetes, and it can be triggered by any number of events or by nothing more than the daily physical and mental burden of living this disease.
“In my own practice,” explains William Polonsky, MD, founder of the Diabetes Behavioral Institute and author of Diabetes Burnout. “I have met far too many people who, because of diabetes burnout, have chosen to ignore their diabetes for years or, in some cases, decades. They are male and female, young and old, new to diabetes and veterans of the disease. They are not bad, stupid, or weak people. They are normal folks who are struggling with diabetes for understandable reasons. And their struggles take many shapes.”
While some feel helpless and defeated by the disease, explains Dr. Polonsky, others’ burnout may be the result of denial an "never truly accepting the reality of diabetes in their lives."
But all forms, no matter the severity or the duration, qualify as burnout.
Checking Out
For Sarah, burnout is something she has endured at least five or six times in the past 27 years of pricking her fingers, counting carbs, taking insulin and hoping it’s somewhat close to the amount her pancreas would’ve given her in an effort to avoid frustrating high blood sugars and exhausting low blood sugars.
“I think of burnout as the Continue reading

Diabetes: Tenth of adults at risk of disease by 2035

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Professor Rubino says increasing the number of operations would save the NHS money
Health experts are warning that one in 10 adults in the UK will be at risk of developing diabetes by 2035.
For the first time, Public Health England forecasts the number of people with the disease could top five million if obesity rates continue to increase.
About 90% of patients have type 2 diabetes, which is linked to being overweight.
A separate analysis says the cost of treating the UK's "diabetes epidemic" could soar to 17% of the NHS budget.
Experts are warning the burden of treating diabetes, especially new cases of type 2, could bankrupt the NHS.
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Paul Dibbins cut off two toes when they went gangrenous.
Statisticians at Public Health England have published a new forecast for the number of people who will develop diabetes in the coming years.
Their analysis includes type one, which is an auto-immune disease and accounts for about 10% of cases in the UK.
But the remaining 90% have type 2, which can be affected by where you come from and your family history, but in most cases is associated with being overweight.
In 2015, there were around 3.8 million people living with diabetes in England alone.
If obesity rates remain stable, Public Health England predicts that by 2035 that figure could have leapt to 4.9 million.
But if obesity rates increase by 3% every five years, an extra 263,000 people will have devel Continue reading

4. Lifestyle Management

Lifestyle management is a fundamental aspect of diabetes care and includes diabetes self-management education (DSME), diabetes self-management support (DSMS), nutrition therapy, physical activity, smoking cessation counseling, and psychosocial care. Patients and care providers should focus together on how to optimize lifestyle from the time of the initial comprehensive medical evaluation, throughout all subsequent evaluations and follow-up, and during the assessment of complications and management of comorbid conditions in order to enhance diabetes care.
DIABETES SELF-MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND SUPPORT
Recommendations
In accordance with the national standards for diabetes self-management education and support, all people with diabetes should participate in diabetes self-management education to facilitate the knowledge, skills, and ability necessary for diabetes self-care and in diabetes self-management support to assist with implementing and sustaining skills and behaviors needed for ongoing self-management, both at diagnosis and as needed thereafter. B
Effective self-management and improved clinical outcomes, health status, and quality of life are key goals of diabetes self-management education and support that should be measured and monitored as part of routine care. C
Diabetes self-management education and support should be patient centered, respectful, and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values and should help guide clinical decisions. A
Diabetes self-management education and support programs have the necessary elements in their curricula to delay Continue reading