Lancets & Lancing Devices For Diabetes: Read This Before You Buy

Lancets are small needles that are used to prick the skin to obtain a blood sample. Many lancets can be used with a lancing device that helps to make it more effective and less painful, however they can be used without one by just sticking the skin with the needle. Once a small blood sample is available, it can easily be put into a machine to run a test. As you can see from the image above, there are many different brands of lancets available.
There are a few tests that can be done using a small drop of blood that the lancet provides. For people with diabetes, they can easily check their blood sugar levels. Using a glucometer, which is the machine that tests the blood sugar, they can quickly find out if their sugar is at a good number or not.
How do the lancet and the lancing device work together
Although the lancet can be used alone to get a sample, it is much easier to use the lancing device along with it. The device provides a quick “punch” of the needle into the skin to make an effective and less painful stick. OneTouch, which is a popular brand of diabetic supplies, has a device that is easy to use. Each brand’s device will be a little different, but the general idea is the same. The following steps demonstrate how to use the OneTouch device.
Step 1. Always wash your hands before checking your blood sugar. If there is bacteria on your hands and it enters into your blood, it can cause a major infection! First, take the cap off of the device and insert a new lancet with the safety cap still on. (If it is removed first, you can poke yourself!) When you insert the la Continue reading

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Asthma and Diabetes: What’s the Link?

So, what’s it like to have diabetes and asthma?
Well, diabetes is a condition where the blood has high levels of sugar in it. It is normally caused by the body producing insufficient insulin. Symptoms of diabetes include excessive thirst, increased urination and blurred vision.
Asthma is a condition that causes patients to have trouble breathing, because of the swelling of the lungs airways. Symptoms of asthma include shortness of breath, tightening of the chest, wheezing and coughing.
So, mix these two together and that is what it’s like to have both diabetes and asthma. However, there is some good news if you have one of them, because there is some light at the end of this tunnel.
Is There a Link Between Asthma and Diabetes?
When it comes to asthma and diabetes, is there a link between the two? Well, we discussed what the two are and their symptoms above, so now let’s look in to the connection between the two. The answer is that people who have diabetes do have higher rates of having asthma. These patients do tend to have a hard time maintaining their blood glucose levels and keeping their asthma under control.
Further reading:
Throughout the years, various studies have shown that people who have diabetes that is not under control or is poorly maintained, are the ones who are at a higher risk of developing asthma, because their lung functioning seems to be weaker than those that have diabetes that is properly controlled or maintained.
On the reverse side, these studies also concluded that people who suffer from asthma are at a higher risk of developing diabetes and Continue reading

Best Herbs To Prevent And Control Diabetes Naturally

Almost 29 million Americans, or 9.3% of the population, have diabetes. That’s a shocking number and it is increasing by the day! More Americans are looking at natural methods to either prevent or manage diabetes. Here, we look the various herbs and plants that help treating the deadly disease. The first part talks about how to prevent diabetes naturally. The second section contains information on how to manage and control diabetes naturally.
Herbs To Prevent And Control Diabetes
1. Indian Kino
The Indian kino tree, also called as Vijayasar, is commonly used as a natural treatment for diabetes and helps regenerate pancreatic cells. Until recently, pancreatic regeneration was thought impossible. In India, a tumbler is carved from the heartwood of this tree in which water is stored overnight and drink the next morning on an empty stomach. This is known to prevent and control diabetes.
2. Asian Ginseng
Asian Ginseng is effective in reducing the level of glucose in the blood. It has the ability to enhance the release of insulin from the pancreas and increase the number of insulin receptors. In clinical studies, it has shown a direct blood-sugar lowering effect.
3. Bilberry
Bilberry is effective in treating eye problems linked to diabetes. Bilberry helps prevent diabetes-related blood vessel damage that affects the retina nerve and vessel functions.
4. Blueberry Leaves
The leaves of the blueberry plant contain hypoglycemic properties beneficial to diabetics. Eating blueberries is linked to a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes and reduces blood sugar levels to normal.
5. Continue reading

Diabetes: Losing weight 'can reverse disease long-term'

INDYPULSE
Diabetes: Losing weight 'can reverse disease long-term'
Patients who reverse their diabetes and then keep their weight down can remain free of the condition, new research has found.
The study found that even people who have had Type 2 diabetes for up to 10 years can reverse their condition after adopting a very low calorie diet.
Professor Roy Taylor, a world expert on the condition which affects two-and-a-half million people in this country and is growing, published his latest findings in the journal Diabetes Care.
The Professor of Medicine and Metabolism at Newcastle University has previously shown that patients with Type 2 diabetes who successfully lose weight can reverse their condition because fat is removed from their pancreas, returning insulin production to normal.
A study led by Professor Taylor five years ago showed that diabetes could be reversed by a very low calorie diet.
International interest was sparked but the study only lasted eight weeks and the question remained whether the diabetes would stay away.
In this new study, 30 volunteers with Type 2 diabetes embarked on the same diet of 600 to 700 calories a day.
Participants lost on average 14 kilograms - just over 2 stone. Over the next six months they did not regain any weight.
The group included many people with longer duration diabetes, defined as more than eight years and ranging up to 23 years.
Overall, 12 patients who had had diabetes for less than 10 years reversed their condition and six months later they remained diabetes free.
In fact, after six months a 13th patient had reversed their dia Continue reading

Transmission of Diabetes Prion-Like Aggregates Triggers Disease Symptoms

Protein misfolding disorders (PMDs) such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), are characterized by the accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates in tissues including the brain. A few rare PMDs, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease), and Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD), can even be transmitted between humans or from animals to humans. In these cases, exposure to the causative misfolded protein aggregates, known as prions, triggers the transformation of normal proteins into the abnormal form. Effectively, prions "seed" the development of misfolded protein aggregation in the brain of the recipient, and this leads to the accumulation of toxic substances that destroy neurons.
Protein aggregation isn’t limited to the widely recognized PMDs, however. About 90% of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) develop pancreatic islet deposits of the peptide hormone islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP). These misfolded protein aggregates start accumulating many years before the clinical diagnosis of T2D, explain Abhisek Mukherjee, Ph.D., and Claudio Soto, Ph.D., who head a research team at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston that studies the molecular basis of PMDs, including AD, PD, and prion diseases.
Previous post mortem and animal studies have suggested that islet IAPP aggregation is linked with key T2D features, including the loss of beta cell mass, but the how these IAPP deposits cause disease development or progression isn’t yet understood. One Continue reading