What You Should Know About The Diabetes-Diarrhea Link

What You Should Know About the Diabetes-Diarrhea Link

Diarrhea is one of the most unpleasant malfunctions that the body can experience. It does however have a purpose – usually to help the body to rid itself of waste, rapidly in liquid form, when there is a bacterial, viral or parasitic infection. There are other causes of diarrhea, and in the case of diabetes, some very specific reasons why diarrhea may present.
The many reasons you have the runs
If you’ve had a bout or several bouts of diarrhea, then you may know some of the other causes. They can include:
Consuming too many sugar alcohols in too short a period of time (chewing many pieces of sugarless gum, for example)
Consuming a food or drink containing lactose, when you are lactose intolerant
Taking a medication whose side effect can be diarrhea (such as Metformin)
Suffering with a disease like IBS (irritable bowel disease), Crohn’s disease or celiac disease
Having a peptic ulcer or gall bladder disease
Use of Orlistat for the treatment of obesity
Food poisoning
Antibiotic use, which can alter the delicate gut microbe balance
Having autonomic neuropathy, as with diabetes
The diarrhea will often resolve quickly when it’s due to some of these causes. Chronic Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes can raise the risk of experiencing chronic, intermittent episodes of diarrhea. Of course, managing or limiting stress, changing a medication like Metformin, and ruling out celiac disease (patients with either type of diabetes have a higher risk for this condition), can help to limit diabetes-related diarrhea episodes. When diabetes-related diarrhea is specifically caused by autonomic n Continue reading

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7 Fruits to Avoid if You Have Diabetes

If you have diabetes, chances are someone has said that you are not allowed to eat fruit. This is not true; people with diabetes can eat fruit as part of their healthy eating plan. But, because fruit is a carbohydrate, it will affect your blood sugar and you cannot eat unlimited amounts.
Certain fruits may cause your blood sugars to spike at a quicker pace than others. The tricky part about eating with diabetes is that everyone responds to food differently. While one person may be able to eat apples without any issue, someone else may find that apples cause their blood sugars to spike. Testing your blood sugars before and after eating fruit can help you to determine which fruits are best for you.
Other ways to keep blood sugars controlled while enjoying fruit is to think about the context in which you eat it. You'll have a better chance at keeping your blood sugars controlled if you avoid juice altogether, limit your fruit servings to no more than two-to-three per day (one serving = 15 g of carbohydrate), pair your fruit with protein or include it into your meal as part of your carbohydrate choice, and avoid fruits that are very ripe. The riper a fruit is the higher its glycemic index, which means it will raise your blood sugar more than a food with a low glycemic index.
In addition to juice, there are certain fruits that make my do-not-eat list. These fruits have been placed on this list either because they have a higher glycemic index or because most people overeat them, which results in higher blood sugar.
One small grape contains one gram of carbohydrate, which means th Continue reading

HbA1c Testing for Diagnosing and Monitoring Diabetes

Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a common metabolic disease that is characterized by frequent sessions of uncontrolled high blood sugar or hyperglycaemia caused by poor insulin production or increased resistance to insulin. The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that 8.5% of the global population was affected by diabetes in 2014, or roughly 422 million people.1
Diabetes is divided into two main types, type 1 and type 2. Type 1 diabetes is manifested by complete deficiency of insulin production, which results in uncontrolled blood glucose levels, type 1 diabetes is generally diagnosed in early childhood so is often referred to as juvenile diabetes.
While type 2 diabetes, the most common type, is characterized by the under production of insulin or the body’s cells becoming resistant to the action of insulin as a result of environmental and genetic factors which often present in adult life, so this type of diabetes is often referred to as adult-onset diabetes.
FBG and OGTT diagnostic testing methods
Previously, the measurement of two-hour plasma glucose through an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) or fasting blood glucose (FBG) was the main diagnostic protocol for diabetes.2 To diagnose a patient as diabetic via FBG or OGTT, the diagnostic criteria are:
FBG ≥7.0 mmol/l, or
Two-hour plasma blood glucose concentration should be ≥11.1 mmol/l, two hours after injecting a 75g anhydrous glucose through an OGTT
While a good level of accuracy is afforded by both testing methods, these have their own limitations. For instance, the FBG test requires 8 hours Continue reading

Fighting the diabetes epidemic the way public health has fought HIV

In the U.S. and other high-income countries, diabetes is a good news, bad news scenario. On one hand, people who have diabetes today fare better than they did 20 years ago. They are living longer and suffering fewer complications, such as heart disease, kidney disease, amputations, strokes, and blindness.
SEEBRI NEOHALER should not be initiated in patients with acutely deteriorating or potentially life-threatening episodes of COPD or used as rescue therapy for acute episodes of bronchospasm. Acute symptoms should be treated with an inhaled short-acting beta2-agonist.
As with other inhaled medicines, SEEBRI NEOHALER can produce paradoxical bronchospasm that may be life threatening. If paradoxical bronchospasm occurs following dosing with SEEBRI NEOHALER, it should be treated immediately with an inhaled, short-acting bronchodilator; SEEBRI NEOHALER should be discontinued immediately and alternative therapy instituted.
Immediate hypersensitivity reactions have been reported with SEEBRI NEOHALER. If signs occur, discontinue immediately and institute alternative therapy. SEEBRI NEOHALER should be used with caution in patients with severe hypersensitivity to milk proteins.
SEEBRI NEOHALER should be used with caution in patients with narrow-angle glaucoma and in patients with urinary retention. Prescribers and patients should be alert for signs and symptoms of acute narrow-angle glaucoma (e.g., eye pain or discomfort, blurred vision, visual halos or colored images in association with red eyes from conjunctival congestion and corneal edema) and of urinary retention (e.g., difficult Continue reading

Diabetes: Fighting the epidemic the way public health has fought HIV

In the U.S. and other high-income countries, diabetes is a good news, bad news scenario. On one hand, people who have diabetes today fare better than they did 20 years ago. They are living longer and suffering fewer complications, such as heart disease, kidney disease, amputations, strokes, and blindness.
On the other hand, more people are developing diabetes than experts even projected, with some 29 million people in the U.S. living with the disease today. One in four people with diabetes remains unaware and almost 90 percent with prediabetes don't know their blood sugar is elevated. And the drop in complications is not enjoyed equally. Minorities, people with low incomes, and younger adults tend to suffer more than their white, affluent, and older counterparts.
"We have gotten very good at caring for and controlling diabetes, but we are lagging in prevention," says K.M. Venkat Narayan, Ruth and O.C. Hubert Professor of Global Health. "The science is there. We know exercise, a healthy diet, and weight loss are extremely effective in preventing diabetes in people at high risk, but we haven't been able to figure out how to translate and scale up the implementation of that knowledge into population-wide interventions that work. We also need to find ways to improve outcomes for disenfranchised populations."
Narayan and his team will be tackling these issues through the newly established Georgia Center for Diabetes Translation Research. The center is funded by a grant from National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases that was awarded to a partnership of Emor Continue reading