Diabetes In Dogs (Diabetes Mellitus)

Diabetes in Dogs (Diabetes Mellitus)

Diabetes in dogs is a common disorder and is similar to juvenile diabetes in people in which the pancreas cannot produce sufficient amount of insulin. This page looks at the symptoms, health risks, and treatment of this disease. It also discusses how to use some natural remedies such as herbs and supplements to help dogs with diabetes.
Diabetes mellitus (sugar diabetes) is a common autoimmune disorder in both cats and dogs. Pets that are obese, as well as neutered male cats and unspayed female dogs are more prone to the disease. Most dogs that have diabetes are between 7 to 9 years old, although it can occur to very young dogs as well.
Sugar diabetes is divided into Type I and Type II.
Type I diabetes (similar to juvenile diabetes in people) occurs when the body attacks the pancreatic cells that make insulin. When your dog's body does not have enough insulin, the body is unable to properly utilize or store blood sugar, resulting in increased sugar levels. The excessive sugar spills over into the urine and is removed from the body. As a result, the body tissues do not have enough blood sugar to sustain a consistent energy level. This is the most common form of diabetes in dogs and is frequently referred to as insulin dependent diabetes (IDDM).
In type II diabetes mellitus, insulin is still produced, but it is either not adequately produced, or the cells are not as sensitive to it as they should be. If the cells are not sensitive enough, then even though insulin is present, glucose cannot enter the cells. Type II diabetes is associated with obesity, and in many cases can be c Continue reading

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Drinking moderately linked to lower diabetes risk

Drinking three to four times a week has been linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes than never drinking, Danish researchers suggest.
Wine appears to be particularly beneficial, probably as it plays a role in helping to manage blood sugar, the study, published in Diabetologia, says.
They surveyed more than 70,000 people on their alcohol intake - how much and how often they drank.
But experts said this wasn't a "green light" to drink more than recommended.
And Public Health England warned that consuming alcohol contributed to a vast number of other serious diseases, including some cancers, heart and liver disease.
"People should keep this in mind when thinking about how much they drink," a spokeswoman said.
'Better effect'
Prof Janne Tolstrup, from the National Institute of Public Health of the University of Southern Denmark, who led the research, said: "We found that drinking frequency has an independent effect from the amount of alcohol taken.
"We can see it's a better effect to drink the alcohol in four portions rather than all at once."
After around five years, study participants were followed up and a total of 859 men and 887 women group had developed diabetes - either type 1 or the more common type 2.
The researchers concluded that drinking moderately three to four times a week was linked to a 32% reduced risk of diabetes in women, and 27% in men, compared with people drinking on less than one day a week.
Findings also suggest that not all types of alcohol had the same effect.
Wine appeared to be particularly beneficial because polyphenols, particularly in red wine, Continue reading

How Type 2 Diabetes Affects the Brain

Reductions in both insulin production and an impaired physiological response to insulin release, which lead to elevated blood sugar, are hallmarks of type 2 diabetes. Less well-known are the cognitive effects of the metabolic disorder. “Diabetes does affect a number of cognitive domains, the main being executive functions, memory, learning, and concentration,” said Rodrigo Mansur, a psychiatry clinical and research fellow at the University of Toronto.
These effects aren’t always dramatic, explained Yong-Wook Shin, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in South Korea. When it comes to the brain, he said, type 2 diabetes has “a subtle effect, but it can be detected.”
That type 2 diabetes can affect memory, learning, and concentration makes sense, according to computational cognitive neuroscientist Dae-Jin Kim of the Indiana University Bloomington. “Our brain consumes about 25 percent of the blood in our body,” he noted. “So, the glucose in our blood should affect our brain the most.”
Two recent studies have approached this diabetes-brain connection from different angles. The first, published last month (June 23) in PLOS ONE, examined brain communication in patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes.
“In terms of the brain architecture,” said Indiana University’s Kim, an author of the study, “it can be assumed that specific functions are happening in single brain regions. For example, our vision is located in the visual cortex of the brain and our auditory function is located in temporal regions of br Continue reading

How Menopause Affects Type 2 Diabetes

When it comes to menopause, there are women who welcome it and women who dread it. There’s also a lot of discussion about whether this transition is something that should be “treated” or left to occur naturally without the use of medication.
But for some women, particularly those with type 2 diabetes, menopause is an even more complicated topic. Not only does it signal the end of childbearing years — it can lead to other physical changes, too.
Why Menopause Is Different With Diabetes
If you usually ovulate every 28 days or so, your cycle may begin to vary as you approach menopause. You may go 40 days or longer between periods or at other times find that your periods come only a couple of weeks apart.
As this is happening, the levels of your estrogen and progesterone hormones are changing as well. These hormonal fluctuations can affect your blood glucose levels, which can cause problems for women with type 2 diabetes.
To avoid complications from type 2 diabetes, it’s essential to keep your blood glucose levels as even as possible — something that can be tricky during menopause.
Recognizing Menopause Symptoms
Some symptoms of menopause can be confused with signs of too high or too low blood glucose, including dizziness, sweating, and irritability. With symptoms being so similar, it may be hard to tell which is which. Rather than guessing, you should check your blood glucose levels when you’re experiencing these effects. If the symptoms persist or get more uncomfortable, try talking to your doctor about treatment options.
Researchers have found that estrogen leve Continue reading

Diabetes in Dogs

Even dogs eating healthy diets can suffer from diabetes. As with diabetes in humans, sometimes a dog’s body’s stops producing enough insulin or the cells of a dog’s body are unable to use the insulin that is produced. When either condition occurs, the result is diabetes mellitus, which causes excessive thirst and urination and extreme hunger accompanied by weight loss. To stabilize sugar levels, insulin therapy is the treatment at the outset and is usually required for the life of the dog.
Summary
Diabetes mellitus is a disease that manifests as an inability of the animal’s body to use carbohydrates (sugars) properly. This occurs either because the pancreas does not manufacture sufficient quantities of the hormone the body requires for this function (insulin) or because the body’s cells no longer recognize insulin properly.
The downside of this fundamental aberration in carbohydrate utilization is that these basic, energy providing nutrients (sugars) are not able to enter the body’s cells to “feed” them. Instead, they linger in the bloodstream while the body itself literally starves.
By way of handling this starvation state, the body does things like start to break down certain tissues, fats for example, and mobilize stored sugar (glucose) in the body to attempt to generate energy with which to feed itself. In the absence of the insulin required to allow sugars to gain entry to the cells, these efforts typically lead to a dangerous metabolic state called ketosis. Moreover, when sensitive tissues like the brain don’t receive the required amount of energy, s Continue reading