Boston Children’s Hospital Finds Root Cause Of Diabetes

Boston Children’s Hospital Finds Root Cause of Diabetes

They say that with just a little more study, they could possibly cure type 1 diabetes.
Boston Children’s Hospital could be on the verge of curing type 1 diabetes. Seriously. This huge news, which was announced today on their blog, could affect the 215,000 people in the U.S. younger than 20 who have diabetes (type 1 or type 2). That’s a pretty huge number, so it’s no wonder why it’s been called an epidemic.
People who live with type 1 diabetes have to inject themselves with insulin to regulate the glucose in their blood. It’s an immediate fix, but there are many long-term complications associated with diabetes, like heart and kidney diseases, nerve problems, skin issues, and problems with vision, among others. “Insulin injections can manage hyperglycemia by reducing the patient’s glucose levels, but it is not the cure,” says Dr. Paolo Fiorina of the Nephrology Division at Boston Children’s Hospital in the report. The Nephrology Division was recently ranked number one in the country by U.S. News and World Report.
Fiorina was looking for the molecular pathway that triggers diabetes, hoping to find better treatment options with the ultimate goal of finding a permanent cure. “In order to truly cure diabetes, we needed to pinpoint exactly why this happens. And then prevent it,” Fiorina says.
According to Boston Children’s Hospital, Fiorina and his team found the root cause of type 1 diabetes:
Fiorina and his team studied hundreds of pathways in animals with diabetes. They eventually isolated one, known as ATP/P2X7R, which triggers the T-cell attacks on the Continue reading

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Doctor Explains How Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Starts With Ignoring The Guidelines On Carbohydrates

Obesity is a life-threatening disease not taken on by choice. Yet, thanks at least in part to our society’s glorification of thinness, many have preconceived notions about those who are obese, believing they are to blame for their situation — that they are simply lazy, gluttonous, and lack the willpower to change.
But as Sarah Hallberg, the Medical Director of the Medically Supervised Weight Loss Program at IU Health Arnett, United States, notes, obesity is a hormonal disease, not a lifestyle choice. And one of those hormones is insulin.
The body processes insulin when glucose is released into the bloodstream following carbohydrate consumption. Usually, this insulin responsF
As for the general recommendations put forth by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), she explains that, “The general recommendations are to tell patients with type 2 to consume 40-65g of carbohydrate per meal, plus more at snacks. We are essentially recommending that they eat exactly what’s causing their problem.”
Hallberg notes that, when treating type 2 patients with insulin, glucose levels rise after eating carbs, as does the need for insulin. But because insulin is the body’s fat storage hormone, this causes hunger fat to be stored, making it difficult for patients to lose weight.
“The ADA guidelines specifically state that there is inconclusive evidence to recommend a specific carbohydrate limit. Nowhere in the ADA guidelines is the aim of reversing type 2 diabetes. This needs to be changed because type 2 can be reversed, in many if not most situations, especially if we start earl Continue reading

What Is Type 1 Diabetes?

Type 1 diabetes is a lifelong disorder in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin. Insulin is a hormone that allows glucose (sugar) to be taken up into cells to produce energy. It is vital for our survival. People with type 1 diabetes require regular daily injections or infusions of insulin to keep them alive.
Although it can be diagnosed at any age, children are more likely than adults to develop type 1 diabetes with peaks in presentation occurring between the ages of five to seven and around the time of puberty. Males are more likely to be affected.
Worldwide, there is a wide geographical variation in presentation. In the U.S., approximately 20 to 30 people are diagnosed for every 100,000 person-years, whereas in China the rate is only 0.1 person per 100,000 person-years. Finland has the highest rate of type 1 diabetes in the world, with 60 people per 100,000 person-years developing the disease.
What Causes Type 1 Diabetes?
Experts haven't worked out the exact cause of type 1 diabetes, but they do know it requires both a genetic disposition to the disorder as well as an environmental insult to trigger the condition.
For nearly four decades, scientists have been trying to work out which genetic loci contribute to type 1 diabetes risk. A lot of information came from one massive project, called the type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium (T1DGC), which collected and genotyped over 14,000 samples. By far the strongest association has been attributed to the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region, which maps to chromosome 6p21.31.
This region contains over 200 genes, and bot Continue reading

IDF Diabetes Atlas: Global estimates for the prevalence of diabetes for 2015 and 2040

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1. Introduction
Diabetes mellitus describes a group of metabolic disorders characterised by increased blood glucose concentration. People living with diabetes have a higher risk of morbidity and mortality than the general population. The global prevalence of diabetes in adults has been increasing over recent decades. In 1964, it was estimated that 30 million people had diabetes [15]. Less than 40 years later, the WHO estimated that there were 171 million people living with diabetes [51]. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimated the global prevalence to be 151 million in 2000 [28], 194 million in 2003 [27], 246 million in 2006 [26], 285 million in 2009 [25], 366 million in 2011 [24], and 382 million in 2013 [23]. Each estimate was based on the latest data available. The IDF Atlas methodology was substantially updated in 2011 [19] to incorporate an analytic hierarchy process that formalised the methods to prioritise the highest quality data from available sources.
The dramatic increase in diabetes has occurred in all countries, and in rural as well as urban areas. Accurate global, regional, and country-level estimates and projections of diabetes prevalence are necessary for prevention and treatment strategies to be planned and monitored, and to assess progress towards reaching the targets set by the Global Action Plan for Non-Communicable Diseases and the Sustainable Development Goals [55].
This paper provides estimates of the worldwide and regional impact of diabetes for 2015 and 2040, based on the most recent and highest quality epidemiological Continue reading

Type 2 diabetes IS reversible: Eating 600 calories a day for 8 weeks can save lives of millions

Type 2 diabetes can be reversed by going on a low calorie diet, new research shows.
Consuming just 600 calories a day for eight weeks can save the lives of millions of sufferers of the preventable condition.
Newcastle University scientists said that excess calories lead to a fatty liver, which causes the liver to produce too much glucose.
The excess fat is then passed to the pancreas, which causes the insulin-producing cells to fail and thus causing diabetes.
Losing less than one gram of fat from the pancreas can re-start insulin production, reversing type 2 diabetes, the researchers found.
Such a diet helps bring about 15kg of weight loss on average. Weight loss has long been known to help reverse the condition.
It’s down to the patients
Professor Taylor, who has spent almost four decades studying the condition, said: ‘I think the real importance of this work is for the patients themselves.
‘Many have described to me how embarking on the low calorie diet has been the only option to prevent what they thought – or had been told – was an inevitable decline into further medication and further ill health because of their diabetes.
‘By studying the underlying mechanisms we have been able to demonstrate the simplicity of type 2 diabetes.’
What did the study find?
The study showed results within just a week of starting the diet. It caused a profound fall in insulin sensitivity.
Fasting blood sugar levels, of which diabetes patients have significantly higher, became normal within the same time frame.
Often thought of as harmless, type 2 diabetes is a hidden killer and Continue reading