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Diabetes: Smart Insulin Patches Developed At UNC, NCSU A Step Closer To Market | News & Observer

Diabetes: Smart insulin patches developed at UNC, NCSU a step closer to market | News & Observer

Diabetes: Smart insulin patches developed at UNC, NCSU a step closer to market | News & Observer


The Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State University was founded in 2003 to bring engineers and medical researchers together to solve pressing healthcare issues. Gu, an associate professor in the department, has been working with his colleagues to remedy the imperfections of current insulin delivery methods.
In the healthy body, insulin secretion always quickly follows the blood sugar levels, says Gu. We want to mimic this process in a scientific way ourselves.
Their solution is a glucose-responsive smart insulin patch that is worn on the skin and instantaneously releases insulin as needed. Roughly the same size as a dime, the patch contains 121 microneedles, each thinner than a human hair and pre-loaded with tiny packets of insulin and glucose oxidase, an enzyme that immediately responds to high glucose levels and sparks a reaction that releases insulin.
If youre a very strict, Type A person who is on an extreme schedule, basically always eats the same thing, has the same activity, and youre really good at math and nutrition, then you might not need this patch. But no one is perfect.
Susan Spratt, associate professor of medicine at Duke University
The on-demand actions of the insulin patches could help people with diabetes worry less about their glucose levels regardless of their activity levels and food intake while also increasing the accuracy of insulin dosing. Not only would the patch prevent high blood glucose, it also would reduce the chance of taking too much insulin, which can result in dangerously low blood glucose lev Continue reading

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Engineering a Cure for Type 2 Diabetes

Engineering a Cure for Type 2 Diabetes


With the failure of forty years of dietary guidelines to arrest or improve the incidence of diabetes and obesity, new thinking and approaches are needed. Applying an engineering mindset to nutrition has attracted attention as some of the new thinking has emerged using root cause analysis and other engineering tools. This has resulted in new insights for the medical and nutrition communities.
This is not really new, I pay homage to doctors like Dr Bernstein who trained as an engineer first, then as a trained doctor realised how controlling diabetes was like an engineering control problem.
Recently, however, as a recovering type 2 diabetic, I plotted my HbA1c against the results of a long-term vegan cure for diabetesstudy to see how it compared. I was astounded by the superior result and tweeted that it was a fifteen sigma improvement. While not reallycorrect, it got me thinking of my recovery in terms of engineering control theory and quality management.
Putting aside whether a cure is possible (for type 2 diabetes) and considering treatment, what if we view diabetes as an engineering control problem and applied control charting to understand the quality of different management options? Note that while I have type 2 diabetes, the glycaemic control problem is common to type 1 and so much of this analysis also is relevant to them too.
Glucose comes from sugar and other carbohydrates (carbs) like starch from bread, rice and pasta. Your body uses about 130g of glucose a day (about 33 teaspoons). Normally, there is no more than about one teaspoon of glucose in your blood at Continue reading

'They Never Talked To Me Like A Real Person': Fighting a Diabetes Epidemic With Empathy

'They Never Talked To Me Like A Real Person': Fighting a Diabetes Epidemic With Empathy


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11/15/2017 09:53 am ETUpdatedDec 22, 2017
'They Never Talked To Me Like A Real Person': Fighting a Diabetes Epidemic With Empathy
Houston is tapping into faith communities to tackle soaring diabetes rates.
Marguerite Butler (left)has worked with nutritionist Joy Ashby Cornthwaite (right), who has helped her understand and manage her diabetes.
When Marguerite Butler plunked into a chair in nutritionist Joy Ashby Cornthwaites Houston office in October 2016, she was spoiling for a fight.
Butler, a then-65-year-old law professor at Texas Southern University, had been living with Type 2 diabetes mostly by ignoring it for more than a decade. At just over 5 feet 5 inches tall and more than 200 pounds overweight, she was not interested in being pressed into weighing herself, taking up an exercise program, counting calories, learning to cook at home or measuring her glucose levels. She just wanted Cornthwaite to sign off on her planned weight loss surgery.
Diabetes didnt scare Butler. In Houston, one of the most obese cities in the U.S., she belonged to the 10 percent of adults diagnosed with the condition, in which the pancreas no longer produces enough insulin to break down the bodys blood sugar.
Left untreated, complications from diabetes are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control, but Butler had been pushed to lose weight for so long, and had failed so often, that it was too painful to talk about.
People always told me what I needed to Continue reading

Black Seed Oil: This Remedy Can Cure HIV, AIDS, Diabetes, Cancer, Stroke, STDs, Arthritis and More

Black Seed Oil: This Remedy Can Cure HIV, AIDS, Diabetes, Cancer, Stroke, STDs, Arthritis and More


Home Healthy Food Black Seed Oil: This Remedy Can Cure HIV, AIDS, Diabetes, Cancer, Stroke, STDs, Arthritis and More
Black Seed Oil: This Remedy Can Cure HIV, AIDS, Diabetes, Cancer, Stroke, STDs, Arthritis and More
admin November 18, 2017 Black Seed Oil: This Remedy Can Cure HIV, AIDS, Diabetes, Cancer, Stroke, STDs, Arthritis and More 2017-11-18T09:18:22+00:00 Healthy Food No Comment
Even though we are living in a modern age there are still no cure for many ailments, and as time passes there are more illnesses which we cannot treat. Thankfully, we can still turn to Nature and find the cure which modern pharmacy cannot provide us with.
One of them is black cumin seed oil, or nigella sativa, which has the ability to inhibit further growth of cancer cells thus making it an effective treatment against cancer that is proven on animal subjects. There are still ongoing studies on this issue, especially on human subjects but there is still not an official proof.
Nevertheless, the black seed oil and its extract (thymoquinone) are particularly effective against liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, brain cancer, stomach cancer, bone cancer, lymphoma, cancer malignancy, and cervical cancer.
Animal studies have confirmed positive effects on its use when cancer is concerned, and now it has to be confirmed the same effect on humans as well. However, we are also living in an age when profit means everything to humans and lucrative companies will do everything in their power to keep it running. As you already know the most lucrative busi Continue reading

When Hurricane Harvey Arrived, They Kept the Diabetes Community Afloat

When Hurricane Harvey Arrived, They Kept the Diabetes Community Afloat


When Hurricane Harvey Arrived, They Kept the Diabetes Community Afloat
Jim Hirschtells the story of how Type 1 Team Texas emerged to meet the diabetes community's needs in the face of the hurricane
The rain began on Saturday. It continued on Sunday, then on Monday, and still more rain fell on Tuesday.
It was like standing in a shower, thats how hard it was raining, said Anne Imber, of Cypress, Texas, about 25 miles northwest of downtown Houston. And it did that for four days.
On Monday night, August 28, with the flood waters rising in her neighborhood, with the bayous spilling over across the city, and with the full blast of Hurricane Harvey beginning to swamp southeast Texas, Imber received a group text shes not even certain who sent it with a simple message: We need to do something.
Imber, 53, has been heavily involved in the diabetes community since her son, Tristan, was diagnosed with type 1 in 2002. She founded two different advocacy organizations that center on non-medical issues for teenagers. She runs the web sites, sponsors programs her expertise is in setting up 504 plans (which spell out the legal rights for any student with a disability) and she speaks at JDRF events, camps for diabetic children, and support groups. She even gives lectures at Texas Childrens Hospital about teens with diabetes.
Her basic point: If you have diabetes, you have to be prepared, whether youre playing sports, traveling, driving, or going to college.
She can now add one more to her list: Surviving 50 inches of rain.
Hurricane Harvey, and the subsequent floods, has killed a Continue reading

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