Stem Cells May Functionally Cure Type 1 Diabetes

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Living with type 1 diabetes can be really rough. There’s a lot of injections and that you have to keep up with and even then, heart health, cardiovascular, and brain health can take some big hits. Some choose to use an insulin pump, but even that has its issues. The disorder affects the immune system, causing it to recognize the cells that make insulin and attacks them. One medical device company, Viacyte, is hoping that they’ve got a device that can protect a special crop of stem cells so that they can live inside the body and produce enough insulin to mostly cure the condition.
About the size of a credit-card, the PEC-Direct contain cells that will respond to rises in blood sugar and begin producing their own insulin, just as the body would on its own. The auto-immune issue is still there, but the device can keep the cells alive long enough to be a cure in all but name.
“If it works, we would call it a functional cure,” Viacyte representative, Paul Laikind, told New Scientist. “It’s not truly a cure because we wouldn’t address the autoimmune cause of the disease, but we would be replacing the missing cells.”
PEC-Direct allows blood vessels to grow into the device itself, allowing the body to feed the stem cells. After three months, they will become islet cells — the kind that monitor the body’s blood sugar and produce and release insulin to compensate. A special fabric helps foster that growth, but patients would still need to take steroids or other immunosuppressing drugs to keep their immune systems from wiping out the freshly-hated i Continue reading

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Top Ten Facts About Diabetes

Introduction to Diabetes
All of us know at leat one person suffering from diabetes. This sums up the prevalence of diabetes. Apart from being one of the most prevalent diseases in the world, it is a disease that opens up the pandora's box of many complications. No wonder it is a dreaded disease and people who are diabetic end up with other medical issues as well.
Diabetes is a group of diseases with one thing in common - a problem with insulin. The problem could be that your body either doesn't make any insulin, doesn't make enough insulin or doesn't use insulin properly.
How is Insulin formed ?
The pancreas, which is an organ present in the abdominal cavity of the body, secretes this hormone insulin. This hormone is the key to the way your body processes food, as it helps maintain proper sugar levels (glucose) in your blood. Glucose is your body's fuel. Cells use glucose to produce energy to grow and function. Glucose is escorted by insulin through your bloodstream and insulin helps in unlocking cells to allow glucose to enter.
In diabetes, lack of insulin or the resistance of your cells to insulin prevents the right amount of glucose from entering your cells. The unused glucose builds up in your blood, a condition called hyperglycemia.
What are the Types of Diabetes?
The disease occurs in two types:
Type 1 Diabetes :
In this type of diabetes, the pancreas produces little or no insulin
This type of diabetes generally affects 4-7 years olds or 10-14 years olds and requires treatment with insulin
Type 2 Diabetes:
This is the most common type of diabetes, it generally develop Continue reading

Gestational Diabetes: The Overlooked Form of Diabetes

Did you know you could have diabetes and not realize it? Out of the almost 30 million Americans suffering from diabetes, over eight million cases are undiagnosed, and almost 1.5 million new cases of diabetes appear every year. As the onset of type 2 diabetes reaches epic proportions in American families, health experts continue to build awareness of the risks and rally for prevention. But what about gestational diabetes? Although it’s easy to shrug off this form of diabetes that targets a specific portion of the community—and often remedies itself after giving birth—the temporary condition, if left untreated, can produce permanent damage.
What is Gestational Diabetes Mellitus?
This form of diabetes occurs exclusively in women—pregnant women, to be exact. Women can be diagnosed with gestational diabetes having no history of diabetes at all. Doctors don’t understand why it occurs in some women, but they know it’s affected by the hormones that support the unborn baby in the placenta. These essential hormones help in the baby’s development, but they also contribute to insulin resistance in the mother. Without regular access to insulin, the mother’s glucose cannot be converted to energy, so it builds up in the blood to dangerous levels. This is called hyperglycemia.
What are common symptoms and factors that may increase the risk of developing GDM?
You’ll need to examine both your family and personal medical history. Some factors that increase your chances of developing GDM include a family history of diabetes and high blood pressure, obesity prior to pregnancy, Continue reading

Use these 17 herbs and spices to fight diabetes

(NaturalNews) According to the most recent American Diabetes Association report, 29.1 million Americans are diabetic. Additionally, the disease still held the rank of being the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. Over 8 million of that 29.1 are undiagnosed, unaware that they have the condition.(1)
Therefore, it's wise for everyone to take a closer look at their dietary lifestyle and eat foods that help fight diabetes.
Fight diabetes with these 17 herbs and spices
Several kinds of herbs and spices exist that keep the disease at bay. Here's a look at what Dr. Alexa Fleckenstein, author of The Diabetes Cure, swears by.(2)
The list of herbs, spices and information below are derived from her
book. Supporting details and their sources are noted, if used.
1. Basil (Ocimum basilicum)
In a small study involving 40 type 2 diabetics, it was found that those consuming this herb were able to reduce their fasting blood glucose levels by approximately 17.6 percent. Additionally, their blood glucose levels after eating a meal were lowered by 7.3 percent.
Why not add their earthy yet semi-sweet leaves to more meals?
2. Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus)
Bilberries' blue color, which exists on the inside as well as the outside, has antioxidants called anthocyanins. They're known to help fight diabetes and lower inflammation. In fact, an Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition study found that regular ingestion of them led to improvements in glucose tolerance.
3. Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla)
Chamomile has the ability to help lower blood sugar levels and properly re Continue reading

Why GPs should prescribe a low-carb diet for type 2 diabetes

It seems every week brings a new headline about the catastrophic epidemic of type 2 diabetes that is threatening to overwhelm our health service. But in my view we are largely ignoring the root cause of the problem and taking completely the wrong approach to tackling it – failing our patients and costing the NHS a fortune in the process.
Instead of giving patients unhelpful instructions to eat less – on a diet based on starchy carbohydrate – and exercise more, and then putting them on to more and more drugs, we should be listening to their experience and observing the growing body of evidence that cutting down on carbohydrate intake is the key.
I am seeing astonishing results in patients with type 2 diabetes who themselves chose to reduce their dietary carbohydrate intakes. Having seen the results, and after many hours of research to understand the physiology better, I believe it would be unacceptable for me not to offer advice on using a ‘low-carb’ diet to patients with type 2 diabetes.
At medical school 20 years ago I was taught that type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease. This is not true – turn off the ‘sugar tap’ and the disease begins to reverse. Type 2 diabetes is a problem of homeostasis. Our body uses its various hormones, including insulin, to maintain blood glucose homeostasis of 4–6 mmol/L, which is about 5g in an average adult. But when we constantly consume food that challenges our blood glucose level, the body takes the hit and shifts the excess glucose to fat storage. Eventually, probably as a homeostatic mechanism to prevent ever-increas Continue reading