National Day Rally 2017: Beating Diabetes Starts With Small Steps, Says PM Lee

National Day Rally 2017: Beating diabetes starts with small steps, says PM Lee

Eat right, exercise more, get your health checked regularly and think twice about picking up that can of soft drink.
These are Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's words of advice to Singaporeans who want to beat diabetes.
"It takes effort and discipline, but it can be done," he told the audience during yesterday's National Day Rally, where he devoted a third of his time to speaking about the chronic illness.
Mr Lee, who has a family history of the disease, said winning the war against diabetes often starts with the little things.
"Genes play a part, but your choices make a difference," he said, sharing how he tries to make healthier choices in everyday life.
"Wholemeal bread instead of white bread. Teh-o kosong instead of teh.
"But if the dessert is chendol, it can't be helped. I will just take a little bit."
The average Singaporean can expect to live up to the age of 82 - among the longest lifespans in the world.
But many will spend around eight years of this time in poor health, with the culprit often being diabetes, Mr Lee said.
While diabetes is often a silent illness, its complications - which range from kidney failure to blindness and even impotency in men - can prove debilitating.
Roughly 400,000 Singapore residents have diabetes.
A significant proportion of them do not even know it.
Diabetes also becomes more prevalent as people age, and is estimated to affect nearly a third of Singaporeans aged over 60.
The Government alone cannot solve this problem, Mr Lee said. It is a matter of personal responsibility.
The first thing people should do is find out where they stand b Continue reading

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Growth in diabetes products lags, but Medtronic earnings solid

Medtronic could be making a lot more money from its diabetes business right now, but executives are confident they can ramp up manufacturing to address a supply shortfall for the Minnesota-run companys glucose sensors in the coming months.
Insulin pumps and sensors make up the smallest stand-alone product group at Medtronic, with less than $500 million in revenue, but the diabetes division had been expected to increase sales by as much as 12 percent this year.
Instead, as the company announced better than expected fiscal first quarter earnings on Tuesday, it pared diabetes guidance to 1-to-4 percent growth for its fiscal year ending in April 2018.
Demand for Medtronics latest body-worn blood-glucose sensors has more than doubled in two years, which has temporarily outstripped our production capacity, chief executive Omar Ishrak said during a quarterly earnings call Tuesday. We accelerated plans to increase sensor production capacity last year, but these lines are not expected to be ready for commercial production until our fourth quarter, which ends in April.
Until then, the company is prioritizing its supply of sensors for customers who already have a Medtronic insulin pump that works with the sensor, which cuts into the supply of sensors available for high-revenue sales to new patients.
Growth in the diabetes division was slower than expected in the quarter, noted Edward Jones research analyst John Boylan. But once they can match supply with demand, which we think they will do over time, this will be long-forgotten, he said.
Medtronic shares dipped about 2 percent Continue reading

Diabetes can be hard on a marriage. But here are six ways that couples can cope with it

Diabetes can be hard on a marriage. But here are six ways that couples can cope with it
A diagnosis of diabetes necessitates an immediate change in diet and lifestyle, and could lead to problems of sexual intimacy.
Published Oct 06, 2017 02:30 pm
A diagnosis of diabetes changes life for the diabetic as well as for a non-diabetic spouse or partner. D iabetes , which is characterised by elevated glucose levels due to the bodys inability to produce sufficient insulin or use it effectively, can have serious health consequences like heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, vision loss, and nerve damage that can lead to numbness in the foot and possibly amputation if unnoticed wounds on the foot do not heal. A person diagnosed with diabetes quickly learns that regulating his or her glucose on a daily basis is critical. Most often, this is done by changing diets and exercise habits.
Diabetes also comes with an increased risk for other physical problems such as erectile dysfunction for men and hypertension and weight gain due to insulin therapy for both men and women. All this can interfere with sexual intimacy. Navigating these changes in the marriage is just as important as managing the dietary and exercise requirements.
All of this can, understandably, be overwhelming for a newly-diagnosed diabetic. But, what diabetes patients and their doctors often overlook is that spouses can help.
Research shows that for diabetes, as for other chronic illnesses, a partners support makes a big difference to the patients management of the disease. A partners support and coping Continue reading

Depleted Uranium Whistleblowers: Cancer, Diabetes and You

Recently I received an intriguing email claiming that the rapidly increasing worldwide epidemic of diabetes was caused by depleted uranium (DU).
As a medical doctor I never heard of such an idea. Every physician knows that radiation can lead to cancer, but the DU and diabetes connection seemed ludicrous. Nevertheless, I thought it would be interesting to check it out on the Internet.
The best tool for medical research on the Net is the PubMed website sponsored by the US National Library of Medicine. I typed in the keywords: depleted uranium and diabetes. No citations to scientific papers in the medical journals appeared on my computer screen, which further assured me there was no scientific connection.
Even when I used key words – depleted uranium and human disease – only a mere 16 papers were cited on the subject from 1994 to 2005; and only half these papers addressed the medical problems of soldiers exposed to DU in the Gulf War.
What was revealed is that DU accumulates in lymph nodes, brain, testicles, and other organs, and the short term and long term effects of DU were not known.
There was a definite increase of birth defects in the offspring of persons exposed to DU; and Gulf War vets who inhaled DU were still excreting abnormal amounts of uranium in the urine 10 years later.
Why was there so little written about DU and its effects on the human body? Having written extensively on the man-made epidemic of AIDS and its cover-up for two decades, I was not surprised. I strongly suspected research into the health effects of DU on Gulf War veterans was “politically in Continue reading

Former Miss America Nicole Johnson Joins JDRF Mission Control

Former Miss America Nicole Johnson Joins JDRF Mission Control
Written by Mike Hoskins on September 8, 2017
We've long been big fans of Nicole Johnson, winner of the 1999 Miss America contest who's now also legendary in the Diabetes Community for her volunteer advocacy efforts, authoring several diabetes books, and the creation of organizations and programs like Bringing Diabetes Home, Students With Diabetes and most recently the Diabetes Empowerment Foundation.
Beyond her pageant fame, she's one of us, a compatriot who fully "gets it" when it comes to living with type 1 diabetes, diagnosed herself during her college years in 1993.
Now, Nicole has taken a full-time position as National Director of Mission for the JDRF , an organization she's been volunteering for since the early days following her diagnosis. In this newly-created position, she will serve under Chief Mission Officer Dr. Aaron Kowalski , whose team aims to "broaden our programs that affect people's lives in the day-to-day," he tells us. Fun fact: 4 of the 5 people on this team live with T1D themselves.
Not surprisingly, Nicole has hit the ground running -- in her first weeks on the job, she's already kickstarted a new JDRF program to train young psychologists to better assist people with diabetes.
Its an exciting time, Nicole says. The JDRF is giving me the ability to explore, on their behalf, what we can do to help people right now. Honestly, its pretty inspiring to be turning this page. Its good for all of us that theres this insistance in trying to make good things happen for people.
Nicole recalls Continue reading