Does Acupuncture For Diabetes Work?

Does acupuncture for diabetes work?

Studies have shown acupuncture can be helpful for relieving diabetes symptoms, in some cases better than diabetes medications.
According to the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation, an estimated 29 million Americans are living with diabetes. Diabetes affects 380 million people worldwide, and the World Health Organization (WHO) approximates that this number will double by the year 2030.
In modern-day China, acupuncture is commonly practiced to treat diabetes. Newer studies are focusing on the biological mechanism of diabetes and suggest acupuncture can be an effective treatment for diabetes symptoms.
Contents of this article:
Acupuncture is a treatment that has been practiced in traditional Chinese medicine for 2,500 years.
Acupuncture involves stimulating points of the body with thin needles.
Diabetes is a disease where the body cannot process food to use as energy.
The result of diabetes is a buildup of sugar in the blood.
Most studies find some validation in the use of acupuncture to treat diabetes, but some suggest further research is necessary.
What is diabetes?
When people have diabetes, it means that their body is either not making enough insulin or is not using insulin as it should. This means the body cannot process sugar, the food it needs for energy, correctly.
There is more than one type of diabetes, but the most common types are type 1 and type 2.
Both types of diabetes can cause serious complications if not treated successfully. Complications may include:
blindness
kidney failure
foot or leg amputations
death
According to the Centers for Disease Control and P Continue reading

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Why Is My Fasting Blood Sugar High in the Morning?

People often wonder the reasons for the high level of blood glucose when they wake up early in the morning. There can be several reasons for the same. This article deals with the topic “Why is My Fasting Blood Sugar High in the Morning?” so, join in for this article and read on:
What is Fasting Glucose?
Fasting blood glucose is the level of blood glucose that you have when you check it early in the morning before eating anything. It is usually high and there are two main reasons to explain the same. The following phenomena are responsible for the high levels of fasting blood glucose in the morning:
What is the Dawn Phenomenon?
There is a host of changes that take place in the body while we are sleeping. These changes are known as the “Dawn Phenomenon.” One of the reasons for high blood glucose levels when we wake up in the morning is this dawn phenomenon. 3 A.M is the time when our body is experiencing the soundest sleep. Hence, around this time the body hardly needs any insulin. Whatever insulin is taken by the body in the evening leads to a sharp loss in the level of blood glucose at this time. As a result, between 3 A.M to 8 A.M, the body is slowly getting more and more resistant to the hormone insulin and the stored glucose of our body is being used for the release of some energy. When all the above things are taking place, the insulin you must have taken at bedtime is also getting used up in the process. All these are responsible for the increase in the level of blood glucose early in the morning when you wake up.
What is the Somogyi Effect?
Another reason for Continue reading

India is the diabetes capital of the world!

The diabetes capital of the world with as many as 50 million people suffering from type-2 diabetes, India has a challenge to face. However, medical experts feel that timely detection and right management can go a long way in helping patients lead a normal life. Diabetes might be one of the most talked about diseases across the world and especially in India, but awareness about the same can well be estimated by the fact that India today has more people with type-2 diabetes (more than 50 million) than any other nation.
With the country having the highest number of diabetic patients in the world, the sugar disease is posing an enormous health problem to our country today. Often known as the diabetes capital of the world, India has been witnessing an alarming rise in incidence of diabetes according to the International Journal of Diabetes in Developing Countries. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) fact sheet on diabetes, an estimated 3.4 million deaths are caused due to high blood sugar.
The WHO also estimates that 80 per cent of diabetes deaths occur in low and middle-income countries and projects that such deaths will double between 2016 and 2030. It has been further estimated that the global burden of type-2 diabetes is expected to increase to 438 million by 2030 from 285 million people (recorded in 2010). Similarly, for India this increase is estimated to be 58%, from 51 million people in 2010 to 87 million in 2030. But debates, discussions and deliberations aside, the fundamental thing is to know what exactly is diabetes.
To put it simply, it is a medical condi Continue reading

What's Your Type? With Diabetes, It Can Be Unclear

A drop in the number of newly-diagnosed diabetes cases is good public health news. But for the Type 1 diabetes community it's a source of frustration, because the numbers hide their story.
Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that new cases of diagnosed diabetes among adults in the U.S. had finally dropped after decades of growth, from 1.7 million in 2008 to 1.4 million in 2014.
The decline in new cases gives "confidence that our diabetes prevention efforts are working and we are moving in the right direction," CDC officials said via email to Shots. "We know that long-term lifestyle changes in those at high risk are critical to prevent Type 2 diabetes and maintain this progress."
While it's certainly the right direction for the more common Type 2 diabetes, the findings don't apply to Type 1, a different condition that appears to be on the rise and that is not caused by obesity or lifestyle factors. Rather, Type 1 diabetes results from an autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.
And while Type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity and can typically be managed with diet, physical activity, and various medications including insulin for some, Type 1 always requires insulin treatment, either with multiple daily injections or an infusion pump, and is far more labor-intensive to manage.
Type 1 is believed to make up roughly 5 percent of the total 29 million adults and children in the U.S. who currently live with diabetes, or about 1.5 million people. But, the actual number isn't really known, and some surveys have suggested t Continue reading

Diabetes in your DNA? Scientists zero in on the genetic signature of risk

Many different mutations linked to Type 2 diabetes all occur in key stretches of active DNA within pancreatic islet cells, interfering with the activity of a master regulator.
Why do some people get Type 2 diabetes, while others who live the same lifestyle never do?
For decades, scientists have tried to solve this mystery – and have found more than 80 tiny DNA differences that seem to raise the risk of the disease in some people, or protect others from the damagingly high levels of blood sugar that are its hallmark.
Disruption of regulatory grammar plays a significant role in the genetic risk of Type 2 diabetes.
But no single “Type 2 diabetes signature” has emerged from this search.
Now, a team of scientists has reported a discovery that might explain how multiple genetic flaws can lead to the same disease.
They’ve identified something that some of those diabetes-linked genetic defects have in common: they seem to change the way certain cells in the pancreas “read” their genes.
The discovery could eventually help lead to more personalized treatments for diabetes. But for now, it’s the first demonstration that many Type 2 diabetes-linked DNA changes have to do with the same DNA-reading molecule. Called Regulatory Factor X, or RFX, it’s a master regulator for a number of genes.
The team reporting the findings in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences comes from The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, the University of Michigan (U-M), National Institutes of Health, University of North Carolina, and the University of Southern Cal Continue reading