The Lifestyle Changes That Can Cut Type 2 Diabetes Risk

The lifestyle changes that can cut type 2 diabetes risk

The lifestyle changes that can cut type 2 diabetes risk
By Dr Rangan Chatterjee Doctor in the House
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Type 2 diabetes affects approximately 3.5 million people in this country and is thought to cost the UK around 20bn per year in both direct and indirect costs.
This is a staggering amount of money spent on a condition largely caused by our lifestyle choices and environment.
On Doctor in the House, I try to help 39-year-old La-Vern. Her mother, Doreen, already has type 2 diabetes and is worried that La-Vern is going down the same route.
La-Vern is a busy, single mother who does two jobs and, as a result, is exhausted and stressed.
She has not yet crossed our diagnostic threshold where we would say she has type 2 diabetes, but her blood sugar and fasting insulin levels are not "normal" either. Her results suggested that she was on the road towards type 2 diabetes.
This is an ideal opportunity to practise true preventive medicine. Type 2 diabetes is a late event. By the time you get a diagnosis, things will have been going wrong in your body for many years.
La-Vern's symptoms of fatigue have already affected her quality of life. However, her lifestyle is not only causing her to feel unwell, but is driving her towards a type 2 diabetes diagnosis further down the line.
This is one of the big problems in medicine today - things are often said to be black or white, normal or abnormal - but what about optimal?
I am an advocate for trying to recognise problems before they happen. Why should we wait for people to get a Continue reading

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Improved pregnancy outcomes in women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes but substantial clinic-to-clinic variations: a prospective nationwide study

, Volume 60, Issue9 , pp 16681677 | Cite as
Improved pregnancy outcomes in women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes but substantial clinic-to-clinic variations: a prospective nationwide study
The aim of this prospective nationwide study was to examine antenatal pregnancy care and pregnancy outcomes in women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and to describe changes since 2002/2003.
This national population-based cohort included 3036 pregnant women with diabetes from 155 maternity clinics in England and Wales who delivered during 2015. The main outcome measures were maternal glycaemic control, preterm delivery (before 37weeks), infant large for gestational age (LGA), and rates of congenital anomaly, stillbirth and neonatal death.
Of 3036 women, 1563 (51%) had type 1, 1386 (46%) had type 2 and 87 (3%) had other types of diabetes. The percentage of women achieving HbA1c<6.5% (48mmol/mol) in early pregnancy varied greatly between clinics (median [interquartile range] 14.3% [7.722.2] for type 1, 37.0% [27.346.2] for type 2). The number of infants born preterm (21.7% vs 39.7%) and LGA (23.9% vs 46.4%) were lower for women with type 2 compared with type 1 diabetes (both p<0.001). The prevalence rates for congenital anomaly (46.2/1000 births for type 1, 34.6/1000 births for type 2) and neonatal death (8.1/1000 births for type 1, 11.4/1000 births for type 2) were unchanged since 2002/2003. Stillbirth rates are almost 2.5 times lower than in 2002/2003 (10.7 vs 25.8/1000 births for type 1, p=0.0012; 10.5 vs 29.2/1000 births for type 2, p=0.0091).
Stillbirth rates among women with ty Continue reading

Overcoming Diabetes Burnout

By: Johanna Murray, Journalism Major, Western Michigan University
Kathryn Finton walks into the classroom on the first day of class looking confident and excited. Her new students shuffle in after her quietly; I am one of them.
I notice a little box attached to the belt loop on her pants. It resembles that of a pager straight out of the 90s. In today’s setting, the pager sticks out, uncommon and foreign to college students of the 2000s.
Professor Finton introduces herself to the class, and introduces the pager attached to her hip as well. The pager turns out not to be a cool gadget from the 90s. Instead, a monitor to track her type 1 diabetes.
After a brief explanation of the little box, to cure the curious minds of her students, she continues on with the class. Her diabetes all but forgotten to the people listening to her words. However, for Professor Finton, her diabetes is something that is never forgotten.
I came to learn that the summer of her 12th year was the beginning of a drastic change in her life. Finton and her younger sister had been wearing matching dresses to their grandparent’s house when her parents noticed that she looked too small in the dress that had fit her well not long before. She was also using the bathroom more frequently than normal. Worried, her parents took her to the hospital the next day.
Twenty pounds under weight, Kathryn was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Her mother, in tears, told her “everything is going to be okay.”
“It didn’t feel like everything was going to be okay,” said Finton.
Her doctor had to explain not only what Continue reading

UCalgary researcher signs deal to develop nanomedicines for treatment of Type 1 diabetes

Photo courtesy Cumming School of Medicine
When Dr. Pere Santamaria arrived in Calgary in 1992 to join the Cumming School of Medicine, he never could have imagined he would make a groundbreaking discovery that would lead to a spinoff company. “When I arrived, I found out that the grant money I was expecting hadn’t come through,” says Santamaria, a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases and member of the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases. “So I had an empty lab with no research assistants and no salary. I had to beg my supervisor to give me $10,000 to start my research.”
Despite the rocky start, Santamaria has achieved something many scientists dream of — making a discovery that has practical applications for health care. Santamaria’s discovery revolves around the use of nanoparticles coated in proteins to treat autoimmune and inflammatory disorders.
“They can be modified for different diseases, such as Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis without compromising the entire immune system,” Santamaria explains. “Instead, they basically work to reset the immune system.”
Nanomedicine’s unique mechanism has the potential to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry entirely. Developing a new class of drugs is rare. With the assistance of Innovate Calgary, Santamaria started a company, Parvus Therapeutics Inc., to represent the technology and explore ways of bringing it to market. Announced in April 2017, Parvus entered into an exclusive deal with the Swiss pharma giant Novartis, hopefully leading Continue reading

Roundup: News from the Advanced Technologies & Treatments for Diabetes conference

Roundup: News from the Advanced Technologies & Treatments for Diabetes conference
This week in Paris, companies in the diabetes managment space came together at theAdvanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes conference to share news and, mostly, a lot of efficacy data. It's an exciting time for the space as closed-loop systems that allow people with diabetes to monitor their glucose continuously and automatically manage their insulin dosing get closer and closer to becoming a validated, regulated reality for people with Type 1 diabetes. We didn't make it out to Paris ourselves, but we're covering the news. We've written up some of the bigger stories from the conference earlier this week. Look below for a roundup of other digital health news from the show.
Nonprofit organizationT1D Exchangepublished a major study in Diabetes Care yesterday (and presented the research at the conference). The data re-affirms the FDA's recent clearance ofDexcom's CGM for insulin dosing. The study looked at 226 adult CGM users for six months. Of those, 149 dosed their insulin using the CGM and 77 used a fingerstick glucometer in addition, as is currently required for most CGMs. There was no difference in outcomes between the two groups.
"This study is an important step to support regulatory pathways for the automation of insulin delivery for people with type 1 diabetes, Dana Ball, executive director and co-founder of T1D Exchange, said in a statement. These data are supportive of the recent FDA decision to approve the Dexcom G5 indication for insulin dosing and removes a key obstacle Continue reading