Fighting Diabetes, Proactively!

Intensive insulin therapy is very aggressive approach to diabetes treatment, designed to keep the blood sugar levels close to normal by constant monitporing and taking frequent insulin shots. It is about the most common diabetes treatment for type 1 diabetes and even type 2 diabetes. Off late there has been some debate on the safety of intensive insulin therapy for type 2 diabetes, but Mayo Clinic has been proponent of the Intensive Insulin Therapy with various press releases etc

Here is an excerpt from a recent interview of Maria Collazo-Clavell, M.D., an endocrinologist specializing in diabetes at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., where she answers questions about intensive insulin therapy.

What is intensive insulin therapy?
Intensive insulin therapy is designed to prevent or slow the progression of long-term diabetes complications by keeping your blood sugar level as close to normal as possible. Intensive insulin therapy is recommended for most people who have type 1 diabetes and some people who have type 2 diabetes — but it isn’t right for everyone.

If your doctor prescribes intensive insulin therapy, you’ll need to closely monitor your blood sugar level and take frequent doses of insulin. You’ll also need regular glycated hemoglobin (A1C) tests. The A1C test reflects your average blood sugar level for the past two to three months. With intensive insulin therapy, the goal is an A1C level as close to normal as possible.

The normal A1C range for people without diabetes is 4 percent to 6 percent. An A1C level less than 7 percent is a common target for people who have diabetes. [more]

I would always advice Preventive care, and then natural care. It is all in the food.
You see sugar is what we eat, and sugar is what diabetes all about.

You need to form diabetes groups, practice healthy lifestyle in the group and follow strict regimes.

Some Dr John Ann has an article on nature cure, to help reduce blood sugar. Not very comprehensive, but useful nonetheless.

1. Cinnamon: Studies are finding that cinnamon reduces blood sugar levels naturally when taken daily. If you completely love cinnamon you can shower the recommended six grams of cinnamon on your food throughout the day to attain the desired effect. If you are not that big a fan of cinnamon there is another substitute…cinnamon capsules..

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A community approach to diabetic care proves to improve the efficiency of diabetic care, indicates the result of a study funded by Novo Nordisk.

To date, 60 team participants from 19 physician practices caring for a total of 1,300 patients have participated in ACP’s “Closing the Gap” module for diabetes, a program that seeks to close the gap between clinical evidence and best practices and the care actually provided in a physician’s office. The practice-based, team-oriented program trains teams – usually an internist, a nurse, and a staff assistant – to improve the quality of care for patients with chronic diseases.

This team-based approach has resulted in statistically significant improvements in many clinical measures such as a nearly 50 percent improvement in the average number of days between patient office visits for diabetes (from 115 days to 58), a 40 percent increase in annual urine albumin testing, a 62 percent increase in annual dilated eye exams (29 percent to 47), and a 100 percent increase in influenza vaccinations (26 percent to 52). Other important improvements were seen in patients’ lipids levels such as lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol.

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When a house fire last year killed 88-year-old Helene Whitlock Alley and her husband, a professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy, she was remembered primarily as an unassuming retiree and a devoted wife.

88 year old Helene Whitlock Alley, had been accumulating wealth all her life, and when she died she left a $7.3 million posthumous donation to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the largest bequest in the nonprofit organization’s history. She left her surviving son, 1 million and a note to help him understand why she made the donation.

She made the donation in memory her brother who had type-I diabetes, and her father.

Noone knew of her wealth which included Old Merck Stock, untill her will was opened.

The diabetes group is not complaining.
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Which was always obvious to me, and I have telling again and again to cut down on the Potatoes, and Rice. But now a study has also indicated that A diet low in carbohydrates but high in animal fat and protein doesn’t seem to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in women.

More:

“One study is never enough to change a recommendation, but this study is interesting in that it shows that a low-fat diet is no better than a low-carbohydrate diet in preventing type 2 diabetes,” said Thomas Halton, lead author of a study in the current issue of theAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “The one diet that did seem to show a protective effect was a vegetable-based, low-carb diet which consisted of higher amounts of vegetable fat and vegetable protein, and lower amounts of carbohydrate.”

The findings, Halton added, were a bit surprising in that most doctors and nutritionists recommend a low-fat diet to prevent type 2 diabetes. “This study showed that a low-fat diet didn’t really prevent type 2 diabetes in our cohort when compared to a low-carb diet. I was also surprised that total carbohydrate consumption was associated with type 2 diabetes, and that the relative risk for the glycemic load was so high.”

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