Researchers Develop ‘breathalyzer’ That Can Detect Diabetes

Researchers develop ‘breathalyzer’ that can detect diabetes

Breathalyzers to detect alcohol intoxication have existed for years, as the relationship between blood-alcohol content and alcohol in the breath is well understood. The same principles may soon be applied to diabetes screening. A team of researchers from Oxford University have succeeded in building a device that can flag patients as diabetic without the need for a blood test.
Right now, the only way to determine if someone is diabetic is to take some blood and check the levels of sugar through various methods. However, diabetes, the inability for the body to process sugar, comes with a number of metabolic quirks that can make it detectable in other ways.
The device developed at Oxford is looking for acetone in the patient’s breath. You probably know that as a volatile solvent, and it is. But it’s also produced as a consequence of regular human metabolism. Because diabetes sufferers are lacking in insulin, that throws much of their metabolism out of whack.
The condition that’s actually being tested for here is ketoacidosis, which is a condition associated with high concentration in the body of molecules called ketones — acetone, of course, is a ketone. In diabetic ketoacidosis, the lack of insulin means you can’t absorb glucose in the blood stream. This causes a cascade of metabolic failures that ends in a high concentration of ketones like acetoacetic acid in the blood. The acetoacetic acid in the bloodstream breaks down into acetone and carbon dioxide, and can be transferred to your breath via the lungs, just like alcohol in the bloodstream. That’s why someone Continue reading

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Managing Chronic Pain

Pain affects millions of people with diabetes. For most of these people, the pain is chronic, defined as pain persisting for more than six months, experienced almost every day, and of moderate to severe intensity, or that significantly interferes with daily activities. In some cases, a person’s pain is clearly related to complications of diabetes; in other cases, it is not. Regardless of the cause, however, studies show that chronic pain makes diabetes self-management much more difficult and often leads to higher blood glucose levels.
Surveys of people with diabetes report rates of chronic pain anywhere from 20% to over 60% – much higher than rates in the general population. The types of pain most often reported by people with diabetes include back pain and neuropathy pain in the feet or hands. (Peripheral neuropathy, or nerve damage in the feet and hands, is a common complication of diabetes.) Headaches and other pain sites are also frequently reported. Many people with diabetes also have arthritis, fibromyalgia (an arthritis-related illness that causes widespread muscle and joint pain and fatigue), or other painful conditions.
Pain has been shown to interfere with self-management activities, sleep, physical functioning, work, family relationships, mood, and quality of life. To make matters worse, pain is often invisible to others, so family members, coworkers, and health-care professionals often have no idea what a person in pain is going through. Many people feel that their physicians don’t understand and tell them they “just have to live with it.”
Why is there Continue reading

32 Diabetes-Friendly Holiday Recipes

Finding mouthwatering diabetic-friendly recipes can be a challenge but don't let anyone tell you that it isn’t possible! Whether you’re throwing a huge holiday shindig or having a more intimate affair, here are 32 diabetic-friendly holiday recipes from appetizers to desserts and every course in between. Continue reading

13 Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes

by Mona Morstein, ND, DHANP
There are many reasons that a person may become insulin resistant, putting themselves at risk for developing Type 2 Diabetes (T2DM). The following are the 13 most common risk factors. This article is excerpted from Dr. Mona Morstein’s new book: Master Your Diabetes: A Comprehensive, Integrative Approach for Both Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.
13 Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes
1. Genetics
Unlike Type 1 Diabetes, which has a minor familial genetic connection, T2DM has an established genetic inheritance. A genetic risk factor essentially means that a person is more likely to develop a condition that his or her relatives had, especially if other factors are involved. Many medical conditions are genetically associated, including arthritis, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and T2DM.
Luckily, genetics does not mean a person is guaranteed to develop diabetes; eating well and having a positive, active, healthy lifestyle can absolutely prevent the occurrence of the condition.
2. Overeating
Overeating is one of the biggest risk factors for developing diabetes. Overeating can easily cause someone to become overweight or, even worse, obese.
3. Central Obesity
When we discuss obesity and T2DM, we are mainly focusing on abdominal obesity, also known as truncal obesity and visceral fat. This is fat that is stored in the abdominal cavity around organs like the liver, pancreas, and intestines. This type of fat is worse for promoting insulin resistance than su Continue reading

Trying a new tack: delivering insulin to the liver to control type 1 diabetes

Type 1 diabetics, armed with glucose meters and insulin pens, are caught in a delicate high-wire act. Too much glucose wreaks havoc on nerves and blood vessels, while too little causes dizziness and nausea. A Cleveland biotech company is trying to change that by delivering insulin to the liver, where it naturally goes.
Diasome has three phase 2 clinical trials in progress testing nanoparticles known as hepatocyte-directed vesicles. These particles, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, stick to insulin like Velcro and bring it to the liver. Diasome believes its approach will better manage patients’ blood sugar than administering insulin alone. Continue reading