Diabetes And Me: How Silent Killer Caught Up With NHS Chief

Diabetes and me: how silent killer caught up with NHS chief

'I just knew something was wrong with me. For several months I had been becoming increasingly, unusually tired and was needing to go to the toilet five or six times a night. I knew it wasn't overwork or stress but didn't know what it could be. My wife Sarah-Jane thought I was just a bit rundown.
This was towards the end of 2012. However, the travelling involved in being chief executive of the NHS, the birth of my daughter Rosa that November and the fact that I'd just moved house meant I didn't get round to seeing my GP until Christmas Eve, a while after the symptoms appeared.
Pretty much right away my GP said: "It sounds like diabetes to me". He took some blood, put it into a machine and it showed that my blood glucose level was way beyond what it should be. That confirmed that I had type 2 diabetes.
He said: "You're going to the toilet a lot as your kidneys are responding to high levels of sugar in your blood and your body deals with that by urinating it out." I said, 'Can I be cured? Can I get out of this?' But he said, 'No, you've got it for life."
He also explained that the main complications of diabetes are heart failure, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and amputation of a lower limb. I knew all that already; I'd given evidence to the public accounts committee about diabetes a few months earlier, ironically. But to hear a doctor saying this to me about me was sobering and very scary.
It was particularly sobering because my father, who'd been a plasterer, died when he was 68 from emphysema and asthma. He spent his last years in a wheelchair. My grandfather, a labourer Continue reading

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One in three of world’s adults with diabetes is in China, WHO reports

Nearly one in three adult diabetes sufferers in the world is in China, where there has been an explosion in the numbers affected in the past quarter-century, a new World Health Organisation report shows.
While China accounts for 19 per cent of the world’s population, it had more than 30 per cent of adult diabetes cases in 2014. Of the 422 million adults with the chronic disease, an estimated 129.3 million were in China, the Global Report on Diabetes, published on Wednesday, said.
The prevalence of diabetes in Chinese adults has increased from less than 1 per cent in 1980 to 9.4 per cent in 2014. Globally, the prevalence of diabetes has also increased, but at a slower rate: from 4.7 per cent in 1980 to 8.5 per cent in 2014.
Diabetes is a chronic condition in which the body either does not make enough insulin to break down the sugar in foods or uses insulin inefficiently. It can cause early death or serious complications like blindness, stroke, kidney disease, amputation and heart disease.
Part of the increase in the prevalence of the disease both in China and worldwide was down to population growth and ageing, according to Dr Hai-rim Shin, a coordinator for non-communicable diseases and health promotion at the WHO’s regional office for the Western Pacific in Manila.
But Shin said risk factors for diabetes, such as being overweight or obese and being physically inactive, had also increased.
“There has been a significant increase [in the prevalence of diabetes in China] that has occurred during a short period of time, which has been driven largely by unhealthy habits: se Continue reading

Raw Honey

by Angela Ysseldyk, Nutritionist and Beekeeper's Daughter
A common question I get is whether or not diabetics can consume honey. It has long been thought that honey should be severely limited (along with most sugars) by diabetics.
But the science strongly indicates that this is not the case. Below I cover three studies on raw honey in diabetics, all of which show positive health benefits for those who consume honey.
In the first study, scientists set out to investigate the effect of consuming honey with one of two common diabetes drugs - metformin or glibenclamide.
Diabetic rats were randomized into six groups and administered distilled water, honey, glibenclamide, glibenclamide and honey, metformin or metformin and honey for four weeks.
What the scientists found was that honey significantly increased insulin, decreased hyperglycemia and fructosamine (fructosamine are used to identify blood glucose concentration over time). Although the two drugs alone significantly reduced hyperglycemia, when they were combined with honey they produced significantly much lower blood glucose as compared to the drugs alone.
Similarly, glibenclamide or metformin combined with honey produced significantly lower fructosamine levels whereas glibenclamide or metformin alone did not decrease fructosamine.
Even more interesting was that glibenclamide or metformin combined with honey also significantly reduced the elevated levels of creatinine, bilirubin, triglycerides (blood fats), and VLDL cholesterol (VLDL cholesterol is considered a type of "bad" cholesterol because elevated levels are associate Continue reading

World Diabetes Day: 5 Top Food Myths Around Diabetes Revealed

Its the World Diabetes Day today! The day which was initiated by International Diabetes Federation to spread awareness and promote better diabetes management amongst people who have been suffering from the condition. Diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by high blood sugar either because of the inability of the body to produce enough insulin or the inability to respond to the insulin so produced. There are many myths associated with diabetes and its long term treatment . And while it is a good idea to maintain caution with your diet and lifestyle to manage diabetes better, it is also important to be able to tell myths from facts. To commemorate World Diabetes Day 2017 and create awareness,we bust the top food related myths around diabetes.
1. Diabetics Should Stay Away From Fruit Juice
It is always more advisable to eat fresh, whole fruits- they have more fibre and are more filling. Also, it helps to exercise certain portion control. It is easy to chug down more glasses of juice than eat whole fruits, which further helps keep blood sugar in check. Why fruit juices are not advisable for diabetics is for their excessive sugar content, the packaged juices that you find in are loaded with sugar, calories and carbs, all of which can result in unnecessary sugar spike. Juices, because they are in liquid form are easy to digest which means easier metabolism of sugar and carbs- which further means faster rise in blood sugar. If you do want to have juice, limit it to 4 ounces.
2.Diabetics Should Not Have Potatoes
You don't need to eliminate potatoes from your diet, Continue reading

Diabetes Before and After

The word ‘Diabetes’ comes from the Greek word that means “pipe-like” or “to pass through”. Not many people realize that it is responsible for claiming the lives of people for over thousands of years. In the body of someone with diabetes, they are unable to use the nutrients in the food for energy, this causes extra glucose to collect in the blood as well as the urine. Food them simply just “passes through” their body and does not absorb any nutrients. Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was a fatal disease.
Treatments Throughout History
The Egyptians treated people with diabetes by using a combination of water, bones, lead, wheat and ground earth.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, opium helped to reduce the pain and despair that was felt by dying patients with diabetes.
In the 19th century, doctors also tried other common practices of healing such as cupping, bleeding and blistering.
The starvation diet was regularly prescribed to patients with diabetes prior to 1922.
The Prognosis of Diabetes Before Insulin
Imagine being a doctor, who got into the field of medicine to treat and heal patients, but after countless tries they always failed to treat patients with diabetes. Children began to waste away, suffering to take their next breath right before their very eyes and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
Before the discovery of insulin, this was the very fate for patients young and old diagnosed with this deadly disease. Adults typically lived under two years, while children rarely lived longer than one years’ time. They suffered greatly Continue reading