The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Of Diabetes In Movies

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Diabetes in Movies

While testing blood sugar, having lows, and shooting insulin might be daily life for you, it’s an action-escalating, drama-creating plot device for the writers and directors of Hollywood. You’ve probably caught at least one TV episode or movie scene about diabetes that got your eyes rolling, but you’ll be happy to know it isn’t all bad (okay, a lot of it is really bad though). You probably won’t be directing anyone to Netflix if diabetes education is your goal, but it’s still helpful to know what kind of info people are getting about your condition from their screens.
The good
Nothing seems to capture the true day-to-day struggle with diabetes, but some of the scripted portrayals at least hit some of the major points.
The Godfather III (1972) might not be the best installment in the trilogy, but Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) does offer a pretty convincing portrayal of what living with diabetes is like. As the mobster weakens in his old age, he is diagnosed with diabetes and offers realistic symptoms like weakened eyesight and a moment where he has a low, has to sit down for a minute, and requests some orange juice or candy. Maybe you haven’t ever been a part of a crime family, but yeah, you’ve probably had to ask someone to bring you some juice before. He even explains at one point that stress affects his numbers. Maybe once Corleone left his life of crime he should have become a diabetes advocate? The portrayal is probably decently realistic because the late Godfather trilogy screenwriter, Mario Puzo, had diabetes.
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Stabilizing diabetes: Old drug could help millions

Dr. Denise L. Faustman is testing a cheap “penny vaccine” that could bring hope to millions struggling with Type 1 diabetes.
The researcher from Massachusetts General Hospital said BCG — a vaccine used against tuberculosis that’s been around since 1921 — could reverse the deadly effects of the disease.
“This offers hope for the first time that people with the long-standing disease will have long-term benefits,” Faustman told the Herald last night. “And to think it’s due to a cheap, 100-year-old generic drug.”
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Diabetes: can you really eat to beat it?

Just over four years ago, my GP gave me unwelcome news: I had type 2 diabetes. I was shocked. I didn’t match the stereotypical patient profile of an overweight couch potato. Aged 59, I was thin, fit and 5ft 7in tall, drank frugally, went running every week and weighed just 10st 7lb. The outlook was not good, with the risk of heart attacks, strokes, blindness, amputations and a 36% greater chance of dying early. I thought, this can’t be happening to me; there has to be a way through. I started trawling the web for information and unearthed a report about a research trial at Newcastle University, led by Professor Roy Taylor.
The results suggested you could reverse type 2 with a daily 800-calorie diet for eight weeks, depending on how quickly and how much weight you need to lose. Taylor’s team discovered that type 2 is caused by fat clogging up the pancreas, preventing it from producing sufficient insulin to control blood sugar level. They calculated you need to reduce your pre-diagnosis body weight by a sixth to starve your body into using up the rogue fat lodged in your pancreas and allow it to function normally. “The body does not like any fat lying around in the pancreas, so it consumes that first,” says Taylor. The daily 800-calorie diet comprises either three 200g liquid food supplements of soups and shakes, and 200g of non-starchy vegetables or the tastier 800g equivalent of calorie-shy meals you measure out yourself, plus 2-3 litres of water.
It sounded tough, but what could I lose? I chose the supplement route. It was like a leap in the dark – I’d always Continue reading

How to Lose Weight and Prevent Diabetes Before It’s Too Late

Weight loss expert and digestive health surgeon Bipan Chand, MD, has devoted his career to treating obese patients, many of whom are diabetic or at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes. We asked Dr. Chand to explain why weight loss is important to preventing type 2 diabetes and to share the best strategies for losing weight.
In the United States, type 2 diabetes is predominantly related to obesity. So someone who is obese and is trying to control a prediabetic condition should focus on weight loss.
With excess fat, especially around the waist, the body has greater difficulty processing sugar and becomes resistant to insulin. As that happens, the level of sugar in the blood rises.
Someone whose blood sugar level is higher than normal (>100) but not too high is said to have prediabetes. That fasting blood sugar level is a snapshot of how your body is processing sugar at that one time. It’s a reasonable screening tool, but obesity is a more important factor.
An increasing Body Mass Index and growing waist size are better predictors of prediabetes. Insulin resistance and diabetes develop over years. Someone with a family history of diabetes and a high BMI for many years probably already has impaired pancreas function. So they may have had diabetes three to five years before it is diagnosed.
Taking action
Each January, many people make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. That is the wrong idea. You should not make a resolution. You should make a decision to review your health, work to improve it and commit to making long-term changes.
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Boston Children’s Hospital Finds Root Cause of Diabetes

They say that with just a little more study, they could possibly cure type 1 diabetes.
Boston Children’s Hospital could be on the verge of curing type 1 diabetes. Seriously. This huge news, which was announced today on their blog, could affect the 215,000 people in the U.S. younger than 20 who have diabetes (type 1 or type 2). That’s a pretty huge number, so it’s no wonder why it’s been called an epidemic.
People who live with type 1 diabetes have to inject themselves with insulin to regulate the glucose in their blood. It’s an immediate fix, but there are many long-term complications associated with diabetes, like heart and kidney diseases, nerve problems, skin issues, and problems with vision, among others. “Insulin injections can manage hyperglycemia by reducing the patient’s glucose levels, but it is not the cure,” says Dr. Paolo Fiorina of the Nephrology Division at Boston Children’s Hospital in the report. The Nephrology Division was recently ranked number one in the country by U.S. News and World Report.
Fiorina was looking for the molecular pathway that triggers diabetes, hoping to find better treatment options with the ultimate goal of finding a permanent cure. “In order to truly cure diabetes, we needed to pinpoint exactly why this happens. And then prevent it,” Fiorina says.
According to Boston Children’s Hospital, Fiorina and his team found the root cause of type 1 diabetes:
Fiorina and his team studied hundreds of pathways in animals with diabetes. They eventually isolated one, known as ATP/P2X7R, which triggers the T-cell attacks on the Continue reading