Desperate Families Driven To Black Market Insulin

Desperate Families Driven to Black Market Insulin

Fourth grader Gabriella Corley is trapped. She has type-1 diabetes and is allergic to the kind of insulin her insurer makes affordable — and her family can't pay for the kind she needs every day to stay alive.
Glancing at the cheerleader from Elkins, West Virginia, at a recent football game, held up on her teammates' shoulders, her grin as wide as her two fists in the air, you might not think anything was wrong.
Then you might notice the insulin pump about the size of a pager tucked into her black compression shorts, clear tubes going under her shirt. It infuses insulin directly into her body through a tube connected to a site on her abdomen.
"She's a beautiful, intelligent, amazing little 10-year-old girl who stands up in the face of adversity every single day without blinking an eye and does it with a smile," said her mother, 32-year-old Andrea Corley.
Soaring insulin prices and inflexible insurance policies have forced this working-class mom to take desperate measures outside the system to keep her child alive.
Gabriella is allergic to the kind of insulin her insurer covers at a $25 out-of-pocket cost. She can only take Apidra, but her insurance only covers 25 percent of the price, leaving the family to pay hundreds of dollars a month they can't afford.
So her mom has turned to the black market, trading for the medication with other families with diabetes she meets online, a tactic that regulators and health experts warn is a health risk. And she cut a back-end deal with a sympathetic drug rep: If she bought one vial he would give her 10 vials from his sample kit, near Continue reading

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Diabetes Diet: New Book ‘The End Of Diabetes’ Highlights Ways To Prevent And Reverse The Disease

Diabetes is usually referred to as a lifelong, chronic disease, one that affects more than 20 million Americans. But now a new book claims that most diabetics can get off medication and become 100 percent healthy in just a few easy steps. In “The End of Diabetes,” Dr. Joel Fuhrman explains how one can prevent and reverse diabetes and its related symptoms, while losing weight at the same time. Designed for anyone eager to enjoy a healthier and longer life, Fuhrman’s plan is simple: consume certain foods heavy in nutrients for improved health and to, ultimately, end diabetes and other diseases.
We recently had the chance to ask Fuhrman a few questions about how a diabetes diet can prevent and reverse the disease.
What are the absolute best five foods one can eat to reverse diabetes?
The high-nutrient (nutritarian) diet I recommend is very high in fiber and low in glycemic load, which helps to keep blood glucose levels in the normal, healthy range. In addition, it floods the body with protective phytochemicals that fuel detoxification and self-repair mechanisms, healing the body from the inside out. The five most important foods for diabetes reversal are:
Beans: Beans are the preferred starch source for diabetics -– my nutritarian eating style is unique in this regard. Low fat vegetarian diets focus on grains as a major calorie source, which are higher in glycemic load than beans, and low glycemic diets focus on animal products, which pose health risks. Beans are a unique food because their starch component is made up mostly of slowly digestible starch and resistant st Continue reading

Insulin Pump for Diabetes: Its Advantages and Disadvantages

When you have diabetes, your body is either not producing enough insulin or the insulin so produced is not being utilized efficiently by your body. Hence, some external sources of insulin need to be administered in the body. There are different ways of doing the same, namely. Insulin injections, insulin pumps, etc. In this article, we shall learn about insulin pumps and the various advantages and disadvantages of doing the same.
What is an Insulin Pump?
An insulin pump is a device which is used by the diabetes patients to administer insulin into the body externally. It is a computerized device which is used for this purpose. There are two different ways in which the device can be used to administer insulin:
Basal rate: This refers to the continuous administration of the hormone into your body in trickles to help keep your blood glucose levels stable not only between the meals but also while you are asleep.
Bolus Rate: This refers to a higher dosage of insulin. It is usually taken just before the meals in order to ensure that the blood glucose is within the normal range when you eat food.
Effective Use of Insulin Pumps
The effective use of the insulin pumps involves the following:
You should be willing to check your blood glucose at least four to eight times in a day
You should be able to adjust the total dosage of the insulin you take according to the food you eat, the total carbohydrate intake, the amount of physical activity that you do, as well as the total level of blood glucose in your body
You need to let other people know that you have diabetes
You have to be motivat Continue reading

How Can Diabetes Affect Your Mood

For someone that has diabetes, experiencing negative emotions like guilt, anger, frustration, fear, and hopelessness is very common.
Nice,2005 notes that when an individual gets diabetes diagnosis, they go through almost the same psychological stages that is disbelief, the denial, anger, and depression.
In fact, higher HbA1c are linked to physical symptoms like hyperglycemic score, tension, fatigue, displeasure, and depression.
Furthermore, the diabetes diagnosis adds emotional weight, and that can be challenging to deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes that weight transforms into depression and anxiety.
According to multiple studies external stressors, like feelings of depression and anxiety causes difficulties when it comes to self-care. Examples of poor self-care management are decreased physical activity, not taking proper drugs, and bad dietary choices.
Stress and anxiety might cause to obtain bad habits such as excessive drinking and smoking. This can put someone with diabetes at a greater risk of the complications related to this condition.
The Grief of Diagnosis
After your diabetes diagnosis, you might enter the grieving process. It is the same feeling as losing someone you love. Below you will find out how to deal with this type of emotions.
Common Emotions of Diabetes
Diabetes is actually a chronic disease that needs management 24/7.
Sometimes that can be a burden. In addition, that can lead to the manifest of other conditions and emotions, and can contribute to greater difficulty when it comes to managing the blood glucose levels.
Fatigue
Physical fatigue might s Continue reading

10 Diet Commandments for Better Diabetes Management

Twitter Summary: The ten diet commandments I follow for healthy eating w/ #diabetes + how to write your own & overcome obstacles
A colorful, downloadable PDF of this article can be found here (convenient for printing!)
The question – “What diet should I follow?” – has perhaps never been more confusing, more controversial, or more stressful. There are more diets, diet books, diet opinions, and news headlines than ever before. In reality, no single “diet” trumps them all, especially for people with diabetes – all approaches have their pros and cons, whether you’re talking about health effects (e.g., blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol), cost, convenience, or taste. So instead of a “diet,” I prefer to think about eating in terms of general strategies, or what this article is calling my “commandments.”
After experimenting with many different eating approaches over the years, I’ve homed in on ten eating commandments that I strive to follow every day – these strategies seem to keep my blood sugars in range, give me plenty of energy, are transportable to different eating environments, are relatively convenient, and fit within my budget. Of course, eating preferences are highly personal (especially in diabetes), and my own principles may not apply for everyone.
If you find this article useful, check out my upcoming book, Bright Spots & Landmines!
A Starting Point: Brainstorming Your Eating Commandments
1. When you see your best blood sugars (ideally 80-140 mg/dl) 90 minutes after a meal, what did you eat? How did you eat? When and where did you eat? Continue reading