How Hibernating Animals Are Helping Doctors Treat Diabetes And Alzheimer's

How hibernating animals are helping doctors treat diabetes and Alzheimer's

People go to sleep, their bodies cool down, and their skin turns blue, as electronic monitors show the heart rate and respiration plummeting almost to nothing. That’s the kind of dramatic image of human hibernation we see in science fiction. Usually, the premise is that characters must spend long time periods travelling through outer space without dying of old age, or writers and futurists have imagined such a capability applied to patients with terminal diseases, so they can be revived when cures have been developed centuries later.
Real-life research into human hibernation, often called suspended animation, may eventually transform those sci-fi images into science fact, but in the near-term, hibernation is poised to transform medicine.
Physicians today already employ mild therapeutic hypothermia - they lower core body temperature of patients by a few degrees - to slow metabolism, routinely after cardiac arrest. It’s also routine to cool patients to facilitate certain operations, such as open-heart procedures, including valve replacement and coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG). Less frequently, doctors lower body temperature by more than a few degrees and clinical trials are underway to stall death for a couple of hours by lowering body temperature to just a few degrees above freezing in victims of severe blood loss trauma.
The latter scenario amounts to short-term, but real-life, suspended animation. While therapeutic hypothermia is standard in hospitals, scientists are trying to steal tricks from hibernating animals, such as ground squirrels.
“Thermoregulatory re Continue reading

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County-Level "Diabetes Belt" Carves a Swath through U.S. South

More than 18 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with diabetes, which costs an estimated $174 billion annually. Typically, local public health agencies carry out the initiatives to manage and prevent this chronic disease, but because prevalence figures are generally given on national and state levels, local workers cannot gain the traction—and funding—to rein in rates in their areas.
A new study drills down to the county level, revealing wide disparities within states and striking national patterns. "We're extremely excited about the county level," says Lawrence Barker, associate director for science at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Diabetes Translation.
Many of the counties with the highest rates of diagnosed diabetes—higher than 11.2 percent of the population compared with the national average of 8.5 percent—are concentrated in 15 states and form an area the study's authors have labeled the "diabetes belt" (after the so-called "stroke belt" that described U.S. Southeast in the 1960s).
"We've known for many years that there was a lot of diabetes in the Southeast," Barker says. But the new analysis, based on data from the self-reported national phone survey called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), confirmed that the disease has a distinctive geographical distribution. The map and findings will be published in the April 2011 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The pattern of disease distribution is not a simple slice—nor does it follow the stroke belt. The diabetes belt touch Continue reading

How to get pregnant if you have diabetes?

Pregnancy needs a little bit of planning and if you are a diabetic, this could mean meticulous planning. High sugar levels in the blood can come in the way of conception and make it difficult for you to get pregnant. But if your sugar levels are in control conceiving should not be a problem. ‘If one is diabetic, it is essential to consult your doctor before conception to take control of the situation. If you can get the sugar levels under control, then conception and pregnancy can get easier,’ says Dr Meghana Sarvaiya, Consultant Gynaecologist and obstetrician, Cloudnine Hospital, Mumbai.
Here she explains how one should plan pregnancy with diabetes:
Pre-conception
First, it is necessary for the woman and her partner to be on the same page when it comes to planning a pregnancy. If both of you agree to have a baby talk to your doctor about how to get your blood sugar levels in check. If you are on oral medications to control sugar levels or any other hypoglycaemic agent, ask your doctor if it is safe to have them while trying to conceive. ‘The widely used oral medication Metformin is considered safe during pregnancy. Depending on your condition your endocrinologist might put you on a combination of Metformin and insulin or just insulin. Any other form of medication during conception is not advisable,’ says Dr Sarvaiya. Apart from this, simple measures like losing a few kilos, cutting down on sugar, diet management and giving up vices like smoking and alcohol are also advised.
If there are any other conditions like a heart, kidney or liver problem due to diabetes that Continue reading

Eating junk food can damage kidneys as much as diabetes, study finds

Eating a junk food diet can be as damaging to the kidney as diabetes, according to a new study.
The problems caused by eating junk food or a diet high in fat are similar to those found in type 2 diabetes, the new research shows.
The study took rats and fed them a diet of either junk food – consisting of cheese, chocolate bars and marshmallows - for eight weeks or a special food that was high in fat for five weeks.
The researchers then looked at the changes those diets made to the animals’ blood sugar levels and the glucose transports that are in the kidneys. Those transporters have a central role in diabetes and problems with them can lead to significant problems for internal organs.
The study found that the rats with type 2 diabetes had more of certain kinds of glucose transporters and regulatory proteins. But the diet caused similar changes in those same receptors – meaning that it could lead to the same problems as experienced by people with diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body has a problem producing enough insulin or doesn’t react to it properly. When that happens, levels of blood sugar increase, which has knock on effects for organs including the kidneys.
But since those same problems can be found with junk food and high fat diets, similar problems might be seen in the future, the researchers said.
"The Western diet contains more and more processed junk food and fat, and there is a well-established link between excessive consumption of this type of food and recent increases in the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes,” said Dr Havovi Chichger, Continue reading

World Diabetes Day 2017: The Connection Between Antioxidants and Diabetes

Antioxidants are usually heard of in relation to cardiac diseases, for skin health or weight management. We know that obesity and inactivity are the major risk factors of type 2 diabetes, recent research results have indicated that oxidative stress may be one of the causes for insulin resistance and less insulin secretion which are well established causes for the onset of diabetes.
A well-established fact is that excessive sugar levels in the blood leads to oxidation of glucose to form free radicals, when the level of these crosses the body’s antioxidant systems capacity, it leads to oxidative stress which has a detrimental effect on the complications and management of diabetes. Antioxidants prevent this oxidation process protecting the DNA and proteins, thereby preventing cell, tissues and organs from permanent damage.
Antioxidants for Diabetics
1. Anthocyanins are naturally occurring polyphenolic compounds that colour your food black, blue, purple, and different shade of red. Research has pointed towards a positive relation between consumption of anthocyanin rich foods and a lowered risk of diabetes. These flavonoids that colour our food beautiful, have been linked to antioxidant activity, improved insulin resistance, and hypoglycaemic effects.
Food Sources: Blueberries, cranberry, bilberry, black raspberry, red raspberry, and blackberry; blackcurrant, cherry, eggplant (aubergine) peel, black rice, concorde grape, muscadine grape, red cabbage, and violet petals. Red- fleshed peaches and apples contain anthocyanins. Black Soybean coat seems to have the most amounts.
2. A Continue reading