Eat More Healthy Fat To Reduce The Risk Of Type 2 Diabetes

Eat more healthy fat to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes

Eating more unsaturated fats instead of carbohydrates decreases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, says research published in PLOS Medicine.
Replacing carbohydrate and saturated fats with healthy fats, such as polyunsaturated fats, lowers blood sugar levels and improves insulin control, according to findings from a new meta-analysis.
Around the world, there has been a sharp increase in the rates of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 29.1 million people have diabetes. That is approximately 9.3 percent of the population.
To treat existing diabetes, the CDC urge people to eat healthily, exercise regularly, and use medications that reduce blood glucose levels. They also emphasize the need to reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as high blood pressure and high lipid levels, and to avoid tobacco use.
High LDL cholesterol associated with diabetes
CDC statistics indicate that between 2009-2012, 65 percent of people with diagnosed diabetes who were aged 18 years and above either had high levels of LDL, or "bad," cholesterol in the blood, or they were using drugs to lower cholesterol.
Amid urgent calls for new ways to prevent type 2 diabetes, some research has focused on how different carbohydrates and dietary fats impact metabolic health.
This has been controversial, and it has led to confusion regarding dietary guidelines and health priorities.
Senior author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Medford, Continue reading

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Radical 'hot water bottle' treatment for diabetes could end to insulin injections

A radical treatment for Type 2 diabetes that can halt the disease in its tracks and avoid the need for insulin injections is being tested at a London hospital.
Doctors hope the procedure — which briefly inserts a tiny “hot water bottle” into the upper intestine — could have a major impact on the country’s obesity-fuelled diabetes epidemic.
The first UK patients had the procedure over the summer at University College Hospital, in Bloomsbury, and more volunteers to test it are being sought. About 3.3 million Britons have Type 2 diabetes.
Dr Rehan Haidry, a consultant gastroenterologist who is leading the Revita trial at UCH, called it “a phenomenal concept”.
He said: “This is probably the most exciting thing I have been involved in in the past few years in terms of its value to healthcare.”
The procedure involves passing a catheter, via the mouth and stomach, into the duodenum, at the top of the small intestine.
Once in place, a small balloon is filled with water heated to 90C to “ablate” or burn the lining of the duodenum.
This causes the cells responsible for absorbing glucose, and releasing hormones into the body to control glucose, to regenerate.
The process, which takes less than an hour and is performed under sedation, “resets” the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar levels.
Type 2 diabetes is caused by the failure of the pancreas to produce enough insulin, or where the body’s cells don’t react to insulin — meaning glucose stays in the blood and is not used for energy.
As their condition worsens, patients often need to take medicatio Continue reading

Diabetes monitoring company Dexcom partners with Fitbit, but Apple Watch users not abandoned

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After praising the Apple Watch earlier in the year, glucose monitoring software company Dexcom has forged a partnership with Fitbit to integrate the technology into the Ionic smartwatch —but the monitoring featured in the Fitbit device may appear on the Apple Watch with watchOS 4.
With a software update in 2018, the Fitbit Ionic will show a user's date from the G5 mobile sensor. Data will be updated every 5 minutes to wearers of the sensor, allowing for trend tracking for diabetics and athletes.
At present, the Dexcom G5 will pass data through a connected iPhone. However, with the implementation of Core Bluetooth in watchOS 4, the same data can be provided to the user without a connected iPhone after the app is installed on the Apple Watch —and all it will take is an app update.
"The collaboration between Dexcom and Fitbit is an important step in providing useful information to people with diabetes that is both convenient and discreet," Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer said in a statement about the collaboration. "We believe that providing Dexcom CGM data on Fitbit Ionic, and making that experience available to users of both Android and iOS devices, will have a positive impact on the way people manage their diabetes."
In June, Sayer confirmed the Core Bluetooth features of the Dexcom G5 monitor. He noted at the time that after an initial setup with an iPhone, the capability would enhance the lives of those who relied on the technology for glucose monitoring.
The G5 relies on a small wire about the width as a human hair inserted just below the skin, and dismissed any possi Continue reading

An Apple Watch for Diabetics Won’t Hit the Market Anytime Soon

During the last few years, we have witnessed an unprecedented acceleration of technological advances for people with diabetes, a condition that affects nearly 30 million Americans. New systems are promising patients less hassle, less pain, fewer injections and finger pokes, less mental math, and less worry about managing their condition. These advances provide more accurate and real-time information on blood sugar (glucose) through wireless technology, apps, built-in clinical decision support algorithms, and automated insulin delivery systems that can reduce diabetes burden and complications. Even Apple (aapl, +0.28%) has reportedly hired biomedical engineers to develop a sensor that detects blood sugar, sparking talk of the company potentially embedding the sensors into a wearable watch that could become a “must have” for people with diabetes. But it will be a long time before it’s actually on the market.
There have been some recent successes: Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems, such as the Dexcom G5 Mobile CGM system, use a sensor through a tiny catheter slipped under the skin that reads glucose every five minutes. This sensor wirelessly transmits information to a stand-alone receiver or smartphone to alert patients of upward or downward trends in their glucose so they can take preemptive action.
Large strides toward an “artificial pancreas” were taken in 2016 when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Medtronic MiniMed 670G, which is the first device to uses CGM data to automatically adjust background insulin doses, which are then deliver Continue reading

Advances in Diabetes Care Apple-style

I think we all understand Apple-style at this point. The company drops a product, the buzz explodes, and after the dust cloud settles we often realize that, yes, our lives and the computing landscape around us have indeed been irrevocably changed.
But what about Apple and T1D?
Let’s start with the deep past. Ten years ago, Amy Tenderich, diabetes advocate and founder of DiabetesMine, wrote an essay called “An Open Letter to Steve Jobs.” IPod sales had recently reached the 100 million mark, and the essay, which went viral, called on Jobs to apply the same technological innovation and brilliance to the design of cutting edge diabetes-care devices. Her thrust: let’s save lives and have convenient access to our music libraries at the same time.
Evidence is emerging that Jobs, who died in 2011, listened.
Last spring Apple CEO Tim Cook was seen wearing a mysterious Apple Watch tied to a prototype glucose tracker. Rumors about Apple cracking the “holy grail” of diabetes management: a noninvasive CGM system that did not require breaking the skin with a needle sensor or wire began to stir. Around the same time, news reports confirmed that Apple had hired a secret team of scientists and was indeed working on such a project.
The here and now
This summer Apple announced a fall update to its Health app incorporating the ability to track insulin delivery doses. The update, which is available in the recently released iOS 11 software, includes both basal and bolus insulin delivery tracking. Simply open Health, go to Health Data, click on results, and then insulin to enter data. Continue reading