Top 20 Tips To Afford Your Diabetes Meds & Supplies

Top 20 Tips to Afford Your Diabetes Meds & Supplies

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If you’re struggling to make ends meet, you may feel like you can’t afford your diabetes medications and supplies. Even if you have insurance, you may not be able to afford the co-pays on some meds, and others might not even be covered. If you don’t have insurance at all, you’re likely wondering how to get food on the table for your family before worrying about your own meds.
By now, everyone knows about the increasing cost of medications. Some are increasing more dramatically than others, such as insulin. According to David Domzalski of RuntheMoney.com, “Diabetes is the most expensive disease in the United States.”
But there is hope. It may take a little work on your part, but below are 20 tips on how you can reduce the costs of your diabetes meds and supplies.
Many of us who participated in this year’s Diabetes Blog Week spent a day contemplating and writing about the many costs of diabetes.
I was inspired to write this after reading the article, “40 Financial Experts Share Ways to Save Money on Diabetes Care,” which appeared recently on the website called TheDiabetesCouncil.com. A lot of the financial advice focused on food and diet ideas for saving money, so I wanted to offer a list of cost-saving tips specific to meds and supplies. Please go and read the original Diabetes Council article for even more ways to make living with diabetes more affordable.
Most of the tips below derive from the Diabetes Council article, but some are from my own experience and Continue reading

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Diabetes causes shift in oral microbiome that fosters periodontitis, Penn study finds

A new study led by University of Pennsylvania researchers has found that the oral microbiome is affected by diabetes, causing a shift to increase its pathogenicity. The research, published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe this week, not only showed that the oral microbiome of mice with diabetes shifted but that the change was associated with increased inflammation and bone loss.
"Up until now, there had been no concrete evidence that diabetes affects the oral microbiome," said Dana Graves, senior author on the new study and vice dean of scholarship and research at Penn's School of Dental Medicine. "But the studies that had been done were not rigorous."
Just four years ago, the European Federation of Periodontology and the American Academy of Periodontology issued a report stating there is no compelling evidence that diabetes is directly linked to changes in the oral microbiome. But Graves and colleagues were skeptical and decided to pursue the question, using a mouse model that mimics Type 2 diabetes.
"My argument was that the appropriate studies just hadn't been done, so I decided, We'll do the appropriate study," Graves said.
Graves co-authored the study with Kyle Bittinger of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who assisted with microbiome analysis, along with E Xiao from Peking University, who was the first author, and co-authors from the University of São Paulo, Sichuan University, the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the University of Capinas. The authors consulted with Daniel Beiting of Penn Vet's Center for Host-Microbial Interactions and did the bone- Continue reading

Nine things you need to know why fighting diabetes must start in cities

Urban areas are complex environments. A large number of environmental, social, cultural and economic factors have an impact on individual and population health. In the following, we will take a look at how urbanisation impacts lifestyle.
1. Diabetes is an emergency in slow motion
It may not have the immediacy of communicable diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV, but diabetes is a bigger killer globally than all of the above combined. (1) It is estimated that 415 million people, or about one in every 11 people, are living with the condition worldwide–that is 33 million adults more than in 2013. (2)
2. Cities are the frontline of the battle against diabetes
Already today, two-thirds of all people with diabetes live in urban environments. Urban diabetes is on the frontline of the diabetes challenge. Without urgent action, the trajectory is clear:
In Mexico City, where diabetes is already the leading cause of death, the number of people with the condition could rise to over 6 million people–nearly 1 in 5 of the population–by 2040.
In Houston, diabetes rates are expected to jump from nearly one person in 10 to one person in 5 over the next 25 years. (3)
3. There are underlying social and cultural drivers
By 2035 as many as half a billion people will have type 2 diabetes. (4) Medical treatment is essential but will not halt its rise. If we’re serious about changing the rise of type 2 diabetes, we must look at the problem in a different way. This means looking to the nearly 2 billion people worldwide who are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. (5) It means l Continue reading

Can Someone Else's Poop Help Diabetes? - Regenexx

The sheer volume of whats being discovered now about how the bacteria in our gut determine our physical and mental health is overwhelming. Literally, if your gut bacteria are screwed up, this can be linked with many different diseases and being overweight. Hence, if you remove the ick factor, it makes sense that if you took gut bacteria from a healthy person and transplanted it into someone who is sick, this may help the recipient. This mornings study authors did just that with patients who had type-2 diabetes, and what they found may rock the foundations of the pharma world.
Why Are Researchers so Interested in Our Feces?
Weve seen a lot of good research in recent years linking health to the conditions in our microbiome, or the bacteria inside our gut and poop. For example, last month we covered a study that found that losing weight isnt just about eating right; its also about having the right gut bacteria . Subjects on the New Nordic Diet who also had a higher ratio of Prevotella to Bacteroides bacteria lost body fat while those on the same diet with a lower ratio of Prevotella to Bacteroides bacteria did not.
If its not just about diet, what can we do to make our gut bacteria healthy? To control blood sugar and weight, probiotic supplements containing the more common bacterial strains(e.g., Lactobacillus paracasei, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, andBifidobacterium animalis) have been shown to be beneficial, and these strains also help regulate gut inflammation.
Ill get to the study in a moment, but first lets look at more links between health and our gut bacteria.
Why I Continue reading

Diabetes Management in Winters

Friday, March 30, 2018 | 12, Rajab, 1439
Srinagar, Publish Date: Dec 12 2017 10:26PM | Updated Date: Dec 12 2017 10:26PM
Diabetes is a metabolic disease characterized by high blood glucose (hyperglycemia) due to insulin (hormone secreted from pancreas that helps in glucose transport from blood circulation in to cells) deficiency in type 1 (T1DM) and insulin resistance (ineffectiveness of insulin) in type 2 diabetes (T2DM). In the long run, both forms are associated with debilitating complications like diabetic kidney disease (nephropathy), eye disease (retinopathy), nerve disease (neuropathy); and macrovascular complications like stroke (paralysis) and coronary artery disease (heart attacks). While in T1DM the treatment consists of daily subcutaneous insulin injections, T2DM is best managed with lifestyle changes in the form of regular physical activity and dietary modification, along with medicines in the form of oral anti-diabetic drugs with or without insulin. Kashmir valley, like other cold regions of the world, faces very harsh winter. Accordingly winter months pose a different set of problems in management and patients and clinicians need to be aware of them. Briefly in winter months people remain largely indoors, are relatively physically inactive, day length is shorter leading to crowding of meals with prolonged night time fast. In this write-up, we discuss these challenges and smart tips for winter care of diabetes.
At the heart of management of T2DM are therapeutic lifestyle changes in the form of calorie restriction (less eating), consuming regularly spaced Continue reading