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Permalink Reply by Tom Goffe on April 18, 2012 at 7:58am

For Type 2s this sounds nice but will have minimal effect. For Type 1s like me this is a waste of ink and a waste of breath.

For real impact, why not have every patient get a BG reading at every health care visit - whether with their PCP, ER or acute care clinic. EVERY TIME. That might cut down the number of people who have diabetes & do not know it. Earlier diagnosis will no doubt lead to earlier treatment that will cut down on the prevalence of costly complications. That will save health care dollars and increase quality of life.

For Type 1s - a cure. Period. Improved treatments will be a nice stop gap, but they should be part of a focused, directed effort toward a cure.

This press release is yet another "look at us - we care" sort of substanceless pap - an example of why bureaucrats never cured anything, including their inflated sense of self worth.

(Rant complete)

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Permalink Reply by MyBustedPancreas on April 18, 2012 at 9:40am

I could not agree more and that is an EXCELLENT point about checking BGs at every provider interaction. It is an easy, simple, cheap test. No harder than checking blood pressure or temperature. It should be included with a basic vitals screening. So strange that I've never even heard that discussed.

For type 1s, I agree a cure would be nice, but I personally think the science is a long way off. Autoimmune conditions are tricky and are kind of a holy grail of medicine. And with regard to T1, everyone considers a "cure" to be a different thing. Is an insulin that can sense (and adjust its release to) BG levels a cure? I would consider that a cure, others would not. Some consider the APP pretty close to a cure. I definitely don't.

What I think is an absolute tragedy is that you have T1s all over the world and even within our own country who have extreme difficulty accessing the basics (insulin and test strips) to properly manage their condition. There are so many T1s who want pumps, but can't afford them. Why isn't something being done about this?

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Permalink Reply by Gary on April 18, 2012 at 10:07am

You know that old saying "If you want something done right you have to do it yourself"? well I am teetering on thinking the only way I am gonna see a cure is if I cure my own disease. I think some of the technologies are here now but cost is and will always be a factor and the slow process of the FDA is another. I think its a very long shot the disease could actually be reversed but forms of transplantation I feel have much potential to get us some time off insulin. A artificial pancreas is very abnormal to me. I still have a hard time even thinking of connecting a pump to myself. At this point even glucose responsive insulin if it could work effectively would be a godsend compared to what we have now. I just can't cope with the sugar swings so whatever can prevent that would be far good enough for me.

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Permalink Reply by Pastelpainter on April 18, 2012 at 4:53pm

I think they need to study diet more. While pre-diabetic type 2s are still told to go on the low GI diet with no checking, then the epidemic of T2s will continue unabated.
Here the practice is to tell T2s they have diabetes, then dismiss them with no meter, no testing, no visits to dietitian. I am at a loss.....

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Permalink Reply by acidrock23 on April 18, 2012 at 6:23pm

I've suggested getting doctors more on board with talking about medicine as food? I pretty much treat it that way-- except on special occasions, of course. I don't think that a lot of doctors even discuss it that much "oh, you want to talk about food? We'll set up with a dietitian...". My GP is an exception to this as he's sort of foodie/ brewer's yeast/ etc. We chat about it a bit and I sort of like his "boost" although I haven't changed a lot of what I'm doing, it reinforces the good things?

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Permalink Reply by jims on April 29, 2012 at 8:28pm

In any other business with this failure rate, we would be looking in to see what we are doing wrong!

T2 - nope no action and keep rotting out.

Insulin resistance has not been properly researched nor understood.

In a distributed storage system of the human body, the signalling hormone insulin is used to advise the skeletal muscles when to uptake glucose if they have room. WHen the don't, the individual cells and their storage sites downgrade the insulin receptors to reduce glucose transfer to those cells/sites - full saturated.

The key still comes back to energy balance and to ensure one is not consuming more glucose than can be safely burnt off and/or stored by a particular body. Chronic overload leads to glucose saturation and leaving no room to store any more glucose and regulate the blood system glucose level.

Fat and being fat are not the cause of this fracas and nor do I believe they are the causitive factor of T2.

Current medical thinking is trapped on arcane thinking and ideas with the outright refusal to consider Insulin Resistance as a normal cell function in a distributed glucose storage system and need to stop overall glucose saturation. The Hunter gatherer digestion system/gene system was never optimized centuries ago to do energy balance but prevent starvation of the
human animal when food quality was both scarce and low energy content.

Today's 24/7 grains, sugars and refined foods have shot up energy availability at exact time as massive labour saving couch potato games, computers, video games, wide screen TV's, cars and appliances that completely bushwack the hunter gaterer digestion system. If it coped with this, there would be capability to pass the excess glucose/calories out of body when it does not need any more. Instead, this old system just grabs every calories/glucose it can and dump into the blood system. Too bad if it is too much.

Secondly, aging and other factors end up with a liver dumping excess glucose in the same system when it is supposed to be fasting. This problem is being worked by some good souls but current medical thinking is to ignore liver leaks et all and just shove more insulin/actos at the problem and then wonder why folks are rotting out.

Notwithstanding there may be a few characters who are determined to leave by excess eating, the idiotic idea that your life style is to blame is shortsighted, unhelpful and does not solve the problem. Yet on the other hand, rectifying the energy balance may well need taking steps in ones life style to cut back on the excess energy consumption and ensure adequate hearty exercise to keep glucose swept out of body regularly. And this is not a comment on fat or lean in any way or ones lifestyle.

What this translates in to is that as the human body does not do energy balance; it is critical in this day and age of 24/7 availability of grains, rice and sugars ( corn et all); the human may well be forced to do energy balance as a health skill for survival and a long life.

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