Important Health Tests For People With Diabetes

Important Health Tests for People with Diabetes

Diabetes is a disease that can affect many areas of the body, but most of the potential problems can be treated effectively when detected early.
To assure early detection of diabetes related health issues, there are several tests diabetics should have either annually or a few times each year. Regular testing facilitates better long-term health and peace of mind.
Annual Tests
Your doctor may recommend you have these tests more or less than once a year, depending on your health status.
Dilated Eye Exam. An eye doctor will determine if you have any retinal damage caused by high blood sugar. Eye drops are used to dilate (widen) the pupils, so the doctor can better examine the back of your eye. Diabetic eye complications can often be controlled, and possibly reversed, with good glucose management. Some individuals require surgery to preserve their vision.
General Health Exam. A yearly general health checkup is a good idea for everyone. Although you may see your diabetes care professionals regularly, they are focused on helping you manage your blood sugar. Your overall well-being is equally important.
Kidney Tests. Kidney health is typically measured using two tests: micro-albumin and creatinine. Micro-albumin tests detect the presence of protein in urine. This can occur if high blood sugar damages small blood vessels in the kidneys. Untreated, it may lead to kidney failure. Measuring creatinine levels lets your doctor know how effective your kidneys are a filtering waste.
Lipid Panel. Abnormal lipid readings are associated with the development of cardiovascular disease, a seriou Continue reading

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A Call to Action for the CDC: Don’t Treat Diabetes as One Disease

Earlier this month, the CDC published a statement that had a lot of people talking. The data reported the number of new cases of diabetes decreased from 2009 to 2014. What many of us have found so frustrating is that the CDC doesn’t distinguish between type 1 and type 2, and in fact, type 1 is on the rise. The Glu team worked with our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Henry Anhalt, and Executive Director/Founder Dana Ball to respond in a statement of their own:
T1D Exchange, a nonprofit focused on driving better, faster research to improve care and speed development of new therapies for people and families living with type 1 diabetes, calls upon the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to clarify its recent statement about a significant decrease in the incidence of new cases of diabetes from 2009-2014.
Strikingly absent from the CDC statement was the statistical breakdown by diabetes types. In particular, the report comingled data collected from people living with type 2 diabetes and people living with type 1 diabetes.
Comingling of the data, particularly from the leading national public health institute of the United States, perpetuates the myth that diabetes is one disease sharing a name, while the reality is that type 1 and type 2 diabetes are actually two different diseases in the diabetes family. Among key differences is that unlike type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes is not lifestyle-dependent; it is the result of relentless autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Once insulin cells are destroyed, individuals spend their lifetime closely monitoring Continue reading

AMAZING! Daughter Cures Dad’s Type 2 Diabetes At Age 8!

Haile Thomas, from Tucson, Ariz., may be young, but she is mighty powerful. When she was just five-years-old she began her cooking career, helping her mother prepare the family meals — but not the ordinary chicken-fingers-and-grilled-cheese kid fare. “My parents are from Jamaica, so I grew up eating oxtail and jerk chicken,” she says. With her adventurous palate and knack for wielding a whisk, it wasn’t long before Thomas was helping plan the weekly menu.
The cooking started out of love for her dad.
“When I was 8 years old, my dad was diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes, a disease caused by unhealthy lifestyle choices,” explains Thomas. “This diagnosis opened the eyes of my entire family. We started to learn about the importance of exercise and how food really effects the body, and realized that we were consuming way too much FAKE, FAST, & CHEAP foods with NO nutritional value.”
“We started to cook even more often at home, eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and exercise more. Within a couple of years my dad’s diabetes was completely reversed with no medication, only healthy lifestyle changes.”
“And while these amazing changes were happening for my family, I discovered that kids my age and younger were being diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes, Heart Disease, and many other lifestyle related diseases,” continues Thomas. “I couldn’t help but notice that my friends at school or people I knew weren’t really aware of issues with food & exercise. And that made me wonder if a majority of American kids and families were just like those in my community. And I qui Continue reading

Why Does Diabetes Make You Thirsty?

Two of the most common symptoms of diabetes are increased thirst and increased urine production.
These symptoms are so prevalent in diabetics that they are often the reason why someone visits the doctor and is eventually diagnosed with the disease. But it is no coincidence that the two symptoms appear to be directly connected.
Why Diabetes Makes You Thirsty
Diabetes is a condition characterized by an excess buildup of sugar in the body. This buildup is due to the body's inability to process sugar correctly; instead of sugar being used for energy, it ends up in the bloodstream.
As with all other material in the bloodstream, sugar eventually makes its way to the kidneys. The kidneys' function is to filter out impurities from the blood and expel them from the body by way of urine. But when sugar starts to collect in the kidneys, they sense a problem. In order to remove the excess sugar, they begin to work harder but are still not able to handle the increased load.
The kidneys need more fluid to handle the extra sugar volume. They find this fluid in the only resource that they have, by removing it from the body's tissues, leaving the tissues lacking sufficient hydration. This action automatically notifies the brain that there is a deficit of liquid in the body, and the brain responds by putting out messages that the body requires more fluids to replenish what has been taken from the tissues, causing excessive thirst.
Type 2 diabetes is different from type 1 diabetes in many ways. As its alternate name of adult-onset diabetes implies, it is usually only found in adults. However, Continue reading

How Gut Bacteria Affects Diabetes, Plus Gut Health Dos and Donts

It has become clear that having good overall mental and physical health depends on having healthy intestinal bacteria.
Those with diabetes should nurture their beneficial gut bacteria for general well-being, plus four specific reasons. One is that intestinal flora seems related to diabetes onset and progression. The other reasons involve concerns those with diabetes often face: inflammation, weight gain or obesity, and depression.
Diabetes and Gut Health: 4 Concerns
1. Diabetes Onset/Symptoms
Scientists have discovered the gut bacteria of people with type 2 diabetes is different from non-diabetics. For instance, people with type 2 diabetes have too few microbes poetically named Firmicutes, but have an overabundance of those called Bacteriodetes and Proteobacteria.
Amazingly, Dr. Max Nieuwdorp, a Dutch microbiome researcher, reversed type 2 diabetes in 250 study participants by re-populating their guts' bacteria using fecal transplantation. Though the thought of a fecal transplant is a bit off-putting, his resolution of diabetes by changing intestinal flora is remarkable.
The onset of type 1 diabetes also tends to follow alterations in gut bacteria, and investigators are finding that certain microbes can actually help prevent this condition.
2. Weight Gain and Obesity
It seems increasingly likely that poor gut health is related to weight gain and obesity. For instance, when researchers removed four types of bacteria (Lactobacillus, Allobaculum, Rikenelleceae, and Candidatus) from lab animals, it led to their obesity by triggering metabolic changes.
Other research revealed th Continue reading