Sami Inkinen On His Bold Plan To Cure Type 2 Diabetes Forever

Sami Inkinen on his bold plan to cure type 2 diabetes forever

Sami Inkinen founded and then exited Trulia about a year after Zillow snapped it up for $3.5 billion in 2014. He’s since moved on to build Virta, a health care startup claiming it can cure type 2 diabetes.
It’s a bold claim. Most treatment plans offer to help those with the disease manage it, not get rid of it. But Inkinen, with zero medical background, believes he’s found a way to wholly eradicate diabetes for good.
The secret is as simple as a low-carb diet.
It seems pretty obvious — cut out the sugar and bad carbs and your diabetes will get better. But that’s easier said than done with humans. Inkinen tells me he’s learned through time where the pain points are and what people need to truly succeed.
So far Virta has conducted a small trial involving 262 people and the results seem promising. A majority (91 percent) of those participating finished the program and 87 percent of them either reduced their dosage or went off their insulin, says the startup. Over half of the participants were able to reduce at least one of their diabetes medications.
I sat down with Inkinen to talk about his company and why he decided to jump into the health care space after his success in the real estate field.
SB: That’s a bold claim that you’re making that you can cure diabetes.
SI: Yeah totally…Without tech you can’t do Virta.
We’re not just a software company, we’re a software company that combines biochemistry and science to cure the disease. If one of those is wrong it’s not going to work.
SB: Do you worry you tell them a bit too early to get off their medicati Continue reading

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Fast-Acting Insulin

Even when you think you’re doing everything right with your diabetes care regimen, it can sometimes seem like your blood glucose levels are hard to control. One potential source of difficulty that you may not have thought of is how you time your injections or boluses of rapid-acting insulin with respect to meals.
Since the first rapid-acting insulin, insulin lispro (brand name Humalog), came on the market in 1996, most diabetes experts have recommended taking it within 15 minutes of starting a meal (any time between 15 minutes before starting to eat to 15 minutes after starting to eat). This advice is based on the belief that rapid-acting insulin is absorbed quickly and begins lowering blood glucose quickly. However, several years of experience and observation suggest that this advice may not be ideal for everyone who uses rapid-acting insulin. As a result, the advice on when to take it needs updating.
Insulin basics
The goal of insulin therapy is to match the way that insulin is normally secreted in people without diabetes.
Basal insulin. Small amounts of insulin are released by the pancreas 24 hours a day. On average, adults secrete about one unit of insulin per hour regardless of food intake.
Bolus insulin. In response to food, larger amounts of insulin are secreted and released in two-phase boluses. The first phase starts within minutes of the first bite of food and lasts about 15 minutes. The second phase of insulin release is more gradual and occurs over the next hour and a half to three hours. The amount of insulin that is released matches the rise in blood glucose Continue reading

Mary Tyler Moore Proved Living Well With Type 1 Diabetes Is Possible

Actress and activist Mary Tyler Moore passed away this week at the age of 80. No cause of death was immediately available, but Moore spoke publicly for many years about her struggle with type 1 diabetes, with which she was diagnosed at age 33.
In a statement, Moore’s rep referred to her as “a groundbreaking actress, producer, and passionate advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.” She had served as International Chairman for the foundation, now known as JDRF, since 1984.
"Mary Tyler Moore’s legacy is that of a woman who tirelessly committed herself to helping the millions with T1D," said JDRF in a statement. "Over the past 30 years, Moore educated about and increased awareness of T1D around the world and raised millions of dollars for research that will one day lead to a cure. Among her efforts, Moore was actively involved in JDRF Children’s Congress, sitting alongside children diagnosed with T1D to share their stories with elected officials on Capitol Hill and demonstrate the importance of continued T1D research funding."
According to the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus magazine, Moore’s frequent lobbying visits to Congress over the years helped increase JDRF’s research budget to more than $1 billion.
Moore became active in diabetes advocacy after she was diagnosed with the lifelong disease herself. In 1997, she told the Archive of American Television that her diabetes was discovered when she was in the hospital after suffering a miscarriage.
“While normal blood sugar levels are to be somewhere between 70 and 110, mine was 750, Continue reading

How can we slow the alarming rise of Type 2 diabetes in children?

Type 2 diabetes was once known as "adult onset" because it was so rare in kids. Not anymore. With one in five school-age children considered obese, the rate of Type 2 diabetes in young people is climbing. The newest study shows an almost 5 percent jump over a decade for those between the ages of 10 and 19.
Dr. Tara Narula joined "CBS This Morning" to discuss what's behind the alarming rise, how the complications resulting from diabetes are happening earlier in life, and the importance of educating kids on the dangers of the disease.
"This is not something we talked about 20 years ago and it is heartbreaking to think that now in this country there are about 20,000 children – children – who have Type 2 diabetes," Narula said.
Narula said the biggest risk factor for developing the disease is obesity.
"We have an obesity epidemic. In addition to that, look at the lifestyle we lead now. How many of our children are getting the recommended 60 minutes of exercise? How many are sitting in front of screens all day long eating fast and processed food?"
In addition to the environmental factors that can precipitate diabetes, there's a family history component.
"As a society we're all having more diabetes as adults. We can potentially pass that on to our children," Narula said. "And what happened prenatally – the more women have gestational diabetes, the more their kids are at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes."
But there are still many questions about how to best treat the disease in children.
"We do not have enough research to know how to appropriately treat children. We're ba Continue reading

U tests new transplant treatment for Type 1 diabetes

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have studied everything from human organ donors to specially grown pigs as sources of insulin-producing islet cells for people with type 1 diabetes who lack them.
Now they are testing the transplant of islets from a new source — embryonic stem cells.
The university earlier this fall became the third U.S. academic institution to transplant an islet cell product made by California-based ViaCyte in patients with severe and poorly controlled diabetes.
A stem cell solution to producing islets could be a significant step in the treatment of type 1 diabetes, said Dr. Melena Bellin, the university researcher leading the local arm of the ViaCyte study. While islets can be transplanted from deceased organ donors, that supply is limited and unpredictable.
“Really, to overcome that barrier, you have to find some sort of renewable source of islets,” she said.
Insulin is a hormone in the pancreas that regulates the body’s storage and use of sugar. Type 1 diabetes is diagnosed when people lack the islets to produce insulin.
Gregory Romero was the second to sign up for the trial. The 43-year-old web developer has resented his type 1 diabetes but managed it through insulin injections.
In recent years he has become less sensitive to fluctuations in his blood sugar, which has resulted in blackouts. Once, he awoke after falling down stairs. Another time, he couldn’t walk and had to crawl out of his house to meet paramedics.
Having a chance at a treatment that could stabilize his blood sugar felt like “winning the lottery,” said Romero, w Continue reading