Does Sugar Cause Diabetes?

The recent film What the Health raised the question as to whether sugar or other carbohydrates cause diabetes. Because blood sugar levels are high in diabetes, a common notion has held that eating sugar somehow triggers the disease process. The American Diabetes Association and Diabetes UK have labeled this notion a “myth,” as has the Joslin Diabetes Center, which wrote, “Diabetes is not caused by eating too much sugar.” These and other organizations have worked to educate people about the causes of diabetes and the role that foods play in the disease process.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Type 2 diabetes—the most common form of the disease—is caused by insulin resistance and pancreatic failure. Sugar can play an aiding and abetting role in diabetes, but the idea that “eating sugar causes diabetes” is simplistic and interferes with efforts to help the public understand the actual causes of the disease and how to protect themselves and their families. Here is what you need to know:
The human body runs on glucose, a simple sugar. Just as gasoline powers your car, glucose powers your muscles, your brain, and the rest of your body. Glucose comes from fruit and from starchy foods, such as grains, beans, and potatoes, and your body can also produce it when needed. Without it, you would die.
Diabetes means having higher-than-normal blood glucose values. It comes in three common forms:
Type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, usually through an autoimmune process. The triggers for this process are under Continue reading

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Apple has a secret team working on the holy grail for treating diabetes

Apple has hired a small team of biomedical engineers to work at a nondescript office in Palo Alto, California, miles from corporate headquarters.
They are part of a super secret initiative, initially envisioned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors that can noninvasively and continuously monitor blood sugar levels to better treat diabetes, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Such a breakthrough would be a "holy grail" for life sciences. Many life sciences companies have tried and failed, as it's highly challenging to track glucose levels accurately without piercing the skin.
The initiative is far enough along that Apple has been conducting feasibility trials at clinical sites across the Bay Area and has hired consultants to help it figure out the regulatory pathways, the people said.
The efforts have been going on for at least five years, the people said. Jobs envisioned wearable devices, like smartwatches, being used to monitor important vitals, such as oxygen levels, heart rate and blood glucose. In 2010, Apple quietly acquired a company called Cor, after then-CEO Bob Messerschmidt reportedly sent Jobs a cold email on the topic of sensor technologies for health and wellness. Messerschmidt later joined the Apple Watch team.
The glucose team is said to report to Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies. According to one of the sources, it was previously led by Michael D. Hillman, who left Apple in late 2015 and later joined Facebook's Oculus as head of hardware. Hillman's LinkedIn page lists him as having had Continue reading

How Diabetes Affects the Feet

There's no sense in pussyfooting around: Diabetes poses a serious danger to your dogs. Having the condition doubles the risk for foot disease. In fact, about 30 percent of people with diabetes who are older than 40 develop medical problems with their feet. The damaged nerves and poor blood circulation that often accompany elevated blood sugar ensure that there is no such thing as a minor cut, scrape, bump, or bruise on the foot when you have diabetes.
While blood-sugar problems can create a dizzying range of hard-to-treat complications, lower-limb diseases that are not properly treated can deteriorate so quickly and so badly that doctors have no other choice but to eliminate the problem altogether. That's another way of saying that people with diabetes account for 60 percent of all lower-limb amputations in the United States. In fact, a patient with diabetes is 10 to 30 times more likely to have a lower limb amputated than a person without the disease.
The Feet
For two sturdy performers who take a daily pounding, the feet are surprisingly complex structures. Combined, your two feet have more than one-quarter of the bones in your body -- 26 each. Although they form the foundation for the body, the feet aren't static blocks but agile and dynamic machines of movement, with more than 100 tendons, muscles, and ligaments apiece. Given their workload and all those moving parts, it's not surprising that about 75 percent of Americans experience one foot condition or another in their lifetime, according to the American Podiatric Medical Association. (Podiatrists are foot doctors.)
Th Continue reading

Diabetes in dogs

Illustration of a dog's pancreas. Cell-islet in the illustration refers to a pancreatic cell in the Islets of Langerhans, which contain insulin-producing beta cells and other endocrine related cells. Permanent damage to these beta cells results in Type 1, or insulin-dependent diabetes, for which exogenous insulin replacement therapy is the only answer.
Diabetes mellitus is a disease in which the beta cells of the endocrine pancreas either stop producing insulin or can no longer produce it in enough quantity for the body's needs. The condition is commonly divided into two types, depending on the origin of the condition: Type 1 diabetes, sometimes called "juvenile diabetes", is caused by destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas. The condition is also referred to as insulin-dependent diabetes, meaning exogenous insulin injections must replace the insulin the pancreas is no longer capable of producing for the body's needs. Dogs can have insulin-dependent, or Type 1, diabetes; research finds no Type 2 diabetes in dogs.[1][2][3] Because of this, there is no possibility the permanently damaged pancreatic beta cells could re-activate to engender a remission as may be possible with some feline diabetes cases, where the primary type of diabetes is Type 2.[2][4][5] There is another less common form of diabetes, diabetes insipidus, which is a condition of insufficient antidiuretic hormone or resistance to it.[6][7]
This most common form of diabetes affects approximately 0.34% of dogs.[8] The condition is treatable and need not shorten the animal's life span or interfere with quali Continue reading

A diabetes test you can do yourself

Are you urinating more often, feeling very thirsty, hungry, or tired? Maybe you’re losing weight. You may have type 2 diabetes. To find out, you can make an appointment with your doctor and have your blood tested for the condition. Or you can go to the drug store, buy a blood glucose meter, and give yourself a diabetes test.
An estimated 40 percent of adults with type 2 diabetes don’t know they have it, which means they aren’t getting treatment that could protect them from very serious health problems down the road, such as heart disease, stroke, blindness, and kidney failure. The best option is to go to a doctor if you’re having symptoms of diabetes. But if you’re reluctant to do that, for whatever reason, the next best thing is to buy an over-the-counter diabetes test kit.
"If you have a family history of diabetes, are obese, or have high blood pressure, you should test yourself for diabetes, if your doctor hasn’t already done so," says Marvin M. Lipman, M.D., Consumer Reports' chief medical adviser. "By being a proactive person, you might save yourself a lot of grief in the future.”
Blood glucose meters can be purchased without a prescription. Models in our Ratings of more than two dozen devices cost $10 to $75. They usually come with 10 lancets, but you might have to buy a pack of test strips separately, which can cost $18 and up; check the package to see what it includes. If the meter doesn’t come with strips, make sure you buy a pack made for that model or you’ll get inaccurate results. Most models come with batteries. Here’s what you need to do ne Continue reading