New Skin Patch Monitors Glucose And Delivers Diabetes Drugs

New Skin Patch Monitors Glucose and Delivers Diabetes Drugs

People with diabetes need to closely monitor their blood glucose levels multiple times every day, usually using a device that pricks their finger for a blood test to assess whether they need insulin shots or other drugs. Since blood collection and shots can be painful, not all patients do it as regularly as they need to—which can lead to dangerous fluctuations in their blood glucose levels.
Researchers have worked for years on methods to improve and even automate blood glucose monitoring and insulin/drug delivery. For example, insulin pumps make drug delivery easier, and recently designed artificial pancreas systems offer closed-loop monitoring and drug delivery. Now, researchers in Korea have just developed a wearable, and potentially disposable, glucose monitoring and drug-delivery system that uses sweat, not blood, to determine glucose levels.
The results, published today in Science Advances, suggest it’s a major upgrade. There are several differences between the artificial pancreas and the sweat-based monitoring system, according to lead author Hyunjae Lee, of Seoul National University in the Republic of Korea. While both devices can check blood glucose in real time and deliver necessary drugs, the artificial pancreas’s drug-delivery needles are permanently embedded subcutaneously, and the device itself is made of rigid plastic, which "might cause discomfort," Lee tells mental_floss.
The sweat-based system, on the other hand, is transfer-printed onto a thin silicone skin patch. It’s made of flexible and stretchable electronics, a series of stretchable graphene s Continue reading

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Managing Diabetes on Little Sleep: How to Keep Blood Sugar Controlled | Everyday Health

Sometimes its impossible to get at least seven hours of sleep per night, but insufficient zs dont have to derail your health goals when living with diabetes.
A growing body of research suggests that getting enough quality sleep is one of the most important factors in our mental and physical health. In fact, you need sleep to live and yet so many people come up short, be it due to stress, lack of time, one of many sleep disorders, or other factors.
So how much sleep do you need for optimal health? The National Sleep Foundation recommends that adults ages 18 to 64 get seven to nine hours, while older adults ages 65 and older get seven to eight hours of snooze time. But one-third of Americans dont get enough sleep, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in February 2016 .
Because insufficient sleep is so widespread, the CDC has declared it a public health problem , pointing to a lack of sleeps link to weight gain, heart disease, depression, and more.
For people with type 2 diabetes or at risk for the disease , the consequences can be particularly dangerous.
The Relationship Between Sleep and Diabetes Risk
For one, shorting yourself on shut-eye raises your risk of type 2 diabetes. Compared with sleeping the minimum recommended seven hours, your odds for developing the disease rise by 9 percent for every hour of shut-eye that you cut, suggests a review published in March 2015 in Diabetes Care .
Past research, the review points out, has shown that a lack of sleep may prompt the body to produce inadequate insulin and boost blood su Continue reading

Teens with Type 1 + Depression

You may already know that depression and diabetes are related, and it turns out that teenagers with Type 1 can be especially susceptible to depression. According to SAMSAs National Survey on Drug Use and Health , more adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes experienced a major depressive episode (MDE) within the past year than their peers without diabetes. Experiencing MDEs is different from experiencing diabetes distress , and its important to distinguish between the two in order to best address mental health issues in teens with diabetes.
[The research] is concerning because depression can affect not just your mood and your energy level, but also how you take care of yourself. That includes taking care of diabetes, says Molly L. Tanenbaum, Ph.D. Molly is an instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. It can be difficult to identify the reasons behind symptoms of depression. If we point to diabetes first, we miss an opportunity to learn whats going on and to offer support.
Symptoms of depression can be identified via a PHQ-9 screening questionnaire and can include:
These symptoms last for two weeks or more and vary from teenager to teenager. If you think youre experiencing symptoms of depression or thoughts of hurting yourself, let your healthcare team know right away.
Two people could get the same score on a questionnaire, and one could be feeling really distressed and discouraged about diabetes, and the other could be feeling down and struggling with school but with diabetes not really b Continue reading

Obesity Action Coalition Dear Doctor Can Bariatric Surgery Treat Type 2 Diabetes?

Dear Doctor -Can Bariatric Surgery Treat Type 2 Diabetes?
Answer provided by Lloyd Stegemann, MD, FASMBS
To view a PDF version of this article, click here .
Diabetes is a devastating problem worldwide. It has been estimated that as much as 8.3 percent of the worlds population has diabetes and this number is on the rise. As your weight goes up, so does your risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D). In fact, almost 25 percent of individuals who are affected by severe obesity (body mass index greater than 35) will carry a diagnosis of T2D. Uncontrolled diabetes leads to a host of long-term problems including heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, blindness and the need for amputations.
For many years, bariatric surgeons have known that bariatric surgery has a profound effect on T2D. It is not uncommon for our T2D patients to come off of all of their diabetic medications after bariatric surgery. Many primary care physicians (PCP), however, have been reluctant to advise bariatric surgery as the first line of treatment for their patients affected by severe obesity with T2D because of the lack of quality studies comparing the effectiveness of medical therapy versus surgical therapy for the treatment of T2D. Two recent studies that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine were designed to help answer this question.
In the first study, known as the STAMPEDE trial, 150 poorly controlled diabetic patients were divided randomly and equally into three groups. All of the patients in the study received intensive medical therapy including lifestyle counseling, weight managem Continue reading

An Overview of Herbal Products and Secondary Metabolites Used for Management of Type Two Diabetes

An Overview of Herbal Products and Secondary Metabolites Used for Management of Type Two Diabetes
Department of Food Science and Technology, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Edited by: Jianbo Xiao, University of Macau, China
Reviewed by: Bhekumthetho Ncube, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; Ying Wang, University of Macau, China
*Correspondence: Nataa P. Ulrih, [email protected]
This article was submitted to Ethnopharmacology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology
Received 2016 Aug 9; Accepted 2017 Jun 16.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
Diabetes mellitus is a common effect of uncontrolled high blood sugar and it is associated with long-term damage, dysfunction, and failure of various organs. In the adult population, the global prevalence of diabetes has nearly doubled since 1980. Without effective prevention and management programs, the continuing significant rise in diabetes will have grave consequences on the health and lifespan of the world population, and also on the world economy. Supplements can be used to correct nutritional deficiencies or to m Continue reading