Shhh. Big Pharma scientists hard at work. On what, you ask? Why, on Novo's new "baby" - a drug designed to treat type 2 diabetes. Liraglutide, a hormone analogue, is supposed to improve blood sugar control. It's also supposed to get you that coveted magic bullet (a la Byetta): weight loss. Ooh, baby. Now that's medication!

Novo Nordisk has been working on Liraglutide for a while now. Here's the latest: Novo announced Monday that two Phase III studies were successful in demonstrating the aforementioned blood sugar control and weight reduction. Novo is riding high on the news: its shares rose six percent on the announcement. According to a pharmaceutical industry analyst quoted by Reuters, the shares surged so healthily because the positive news was expected.

The powers-that-be at the drug giant say they hope Liraglutide can be submitted for regulatory approval by mid-2008. They hope it will become another blockbuster, with estimated annual sales topping one billion. Stay tuned.

You may have heard that diabetics face a greater risk of complications during hospital stays. Well, now there's evidence that diabetics with trauma injuries are particularly at risk. That info comes courtesy of a large Pennsylvania study that looked at records for around 25,000 trauma patients, half with diabetes, the other half without. The study tracked the patients' progress over the course of almost twenty years. Impressive.

What did they find? Twenty-three percent of the diabetic trauma patients experienced complications. That compares with only fourteen percent of non-diabetics. The diabetics also spent slightly more time in intensive care and were more likely to need ventilator support. The overall risk of infections was higher too - eleven percent versus six percent.

Good news: despite all this, the data did not suggest people with diabetes are more likely to die after a trauma injury. Nor did it suggest diabetics stay in hospital longer than non-diabetics. The team that conducted the study states that the next step would be to examine whether or not improved blood sugar control in diabetic trauma patients would impact these figures.

Read more about these findings by visiting MedPageToday or, for a brief summary, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Or check out the full report, published in Archives of Surgery (July, 2007).

Although the A1c test provides important information about how blood glucose has behaved over the preceding three months, the blood sugar fluctuations after meals have a greater impact on diabetic complications. GlycoMark is a test that monitors mealtime spikes over 2 days to 2 weeks in a single sample.

For diabetics who have good control (A1c less than 7.3%), blood glucose levels immediately following meals account for up to 70% of their total A1c. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that controlling after-meal glucose levels is critically important in reducing diabetic complications. GlycoMark measures the brief blood glucose elevations (postprandial hyperglycemia) by reading 1,5-anhydroglucitol (1,5-AG). 1,5-AG drops as blood glucose rises above the renal threshold of glucose. The renal threshold of glucose is the blood sugar at which the kidneys start excreting sugar into the urine.1,5-AG decreases rapidly in people with elevated blood sugar.

It is important to note that GlycoMark values decrease when blood sugar increases. An increase in 1,5-AG would indicate improvement, and decrease would indicate worsening of glycemic control. Upon return of better glycemic control, 1,5-AG increases at a constant rate. This consistent recovery rate in 1,5-AG levels provides a rapid indication of the patient's response to treatment. With the GlycoMark, perhaps now we can really evaluate the affects of certain types of foods and how they affect our ability to control our blood sugar after meals. Fore more details, checkout the full brochure online.

As Bev just pointed out, diabulimia is a serious condition when a type 1 diabetic is not taking their insulin in order to lose weight. Diabulimia is a term that has only cropped up in recent years. Most people who experience diabulemia are stuck between two fears: taking increasing doses of insulin, which leads to weight gain, and the damage the destructive behavior is causing their body in the long-term.

One expert who has studied the phenomenon estimates that 450,000 type 1 diabetic women in the United States - one-third of the total - have skipped or shortchanged their insulin to lose weight and are risking a coma and an early death. Ann Goebel-Fabbri, a clinical psychologist at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston says, "People who do this behavior wind up with severe diabetic complications much earlier". Is that supposed to be a warning or a promise? It sounds like she's saying complications are inevitable - but if you're contented with the weight gain - you'll deter the early arrival of complications. Poor advice, doc.

The caution of do as you're told and complications will arrive later is not a very promising guarantee. The behaviors of tight diabetes control are almost tantamount to cultivating eating disorders. Studies show that women with type 1 diabetes are twice as likely to develop an eating disorder. After all -- good diabetes management requires a preoccupation with food, counting carbohydrates and following a diet. Sounds like the ingredients for an eating disorder - throw in a hormonal imbalance (genetically modified insulin that arrives late to the brain, unlike natural vertebrate pork and cow insulin) and you've got yourself diabulemia. Thanks again, Big Pharma!! Where is the prize in good diabetes management if you are punished with weight gain?

Whenever I eat something chock-full of sugar and high-glycemic carbs, I often wonder how my pancreas is doing. Is it in insulin overdrive? I know I certainly feel better when I eat a balance of lean proteins, fruits and vegetables.

Successfully treating diabetes requires more than oral medications and/or insulin. For consistent blood sugar control it is vitally important to consider the foods you eat.

The American Diabetes Association's Virtual Grocery Store is a nice tool for diabetics or anyone wishing to eat healthier and trim the waistline. Start out on a Grocery Store Tour to help you evaluate and choose healthy foods for you and your family. Foods are separated in typical grocery store aisles, with nutritional information provided in a dietary framework that speaks to diabetics.

Click on the Recipe section for dozens of diabetic-friendly meals or head to Express Lane for quick meal ideas. Meal Planning and Shopping List tools are also available. I promise to try a Virtual Grocery Store recipe from time to time. If it passes the family test, I'll be sure to share it!

Until recently, little evidence existed regarding the effects of soy consumption on the metabolic syndrome in humans. Researchers evaluated the effects of soy consumption on metabolic symdrome and found it improved glycemic control and lipid profiles in postmenopausal women.

The study evaluated the plasma lipids, lipoproteins, insulin resistance, and glycemic control in 42 postmenopausal women with the metabolic syndrome. Participants were randomly assigned to consume a control diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, DASH), a soy-protein diet, or a soy-nut diet, each for 8 weeks. Red meat in the DASH period was replaced by soy-protein in the soy-protein period and by soy-nut in the soy-nut period.

The soy-nut regimen decreased the insulin resistance score significantly compared with the soy-protein or control diets. Consumption of soy-nut also reduced fasting blood sugar significantly than did the soy-protein or control diet. The soy-nut regimen decreased LDL cholesterol more than did the soy-protein period and the control diet. Soy-nut consumption significantly reduced serum C-peptide concentrations compared with control diet but consumption of soy-protein did not.

Consumption of the soy-nut leg of the experiment significantly reduced C-peptide concentrations because it was evident that the diabetic women were not creating as much insulin to counter the sugar rise in their blood. C-peptide is ONLY present when your body is producing insulin. So can one logically deduce that naturally occurring insulin causes insulin resistance? Uh oh. Sounds like we've got a pickle of a situation happening here.

Medtronic, one of the largest manufacturers of insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors, issued a call to action request for insurance companies. The need for greater coverage on continuous glucose monitors is as important (and as necessary) as the rising demand for insulin pumps.

The president of Medtronic's diabetes division, Chris O'Connell, urged the insurance companies to consider the vast growth of the company - which was measured as considerably faster than the industry average, with sales climbing 24% in the last quarter. The device was approved for adult patients last year and U.S. regulators approved an expanded edition for use in children. The continuous glucose monitor alerts diabetics to dangerous spikes or dips in their blood sugar levels via wire-like sensors inserted under the skin that measure glucose levels and transmit the data wirelessly to a pager-size receiver.

The company plans to conduct clinical studies to demonstrate the cost effectiveness of the technology. Presumably, after two to three years of clinical trials, the evidence will be conclusive enough for insurance companies to consent to providing greater coverage for this continuous glucose monitoring.

For the past 10 years, the city of Asheville, NC has given free diabetes medicines and supplies to municipal workers if they agree to monthly counseling from specially trained pharmacists. The results are significant: almost twice as many patients have their blood sugar levels under control and the city's health care plan has saved more than $2,000 in medical costs per patient each year.

Every dollar spent on medicines or counseling saves the city $4 by preventing emergency room visits, dialysis, amputations or other common complications of diabetes. The program has reduced the number of sick days taken among employees, reduced their chances of catastrophic hospitalization, and saved-money for the federal health care system by encouraging better diabetes management.

Efforts to help people change their lifestyles are complicated by a health care system in which insurers typically do not reimburse doctors for the kinds of counseling and monitoring that might keep patients on track. This experiment has enlisted pharmacists as coaches, clinicians and cheerleaders for the participating patients. It seems the coaches, the players, and the club owners agree -- the teamwork is well worth the payoff!

That's right, look no further than the home team for stem cell supplies. Scientists are reporting they have used stem cells from human bone marrow to repair defective insulin-producing pancreatic cells, responsible for diabetes in mice. The discovery was made by researchers at Tulane University in New Orleans. In addition to repairing defective pancreatic cells, the treatment showed to arrest kidney damage resulting from diabetes.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells, having the capacity to turn into any kind of tissue in the body. The Tulane researchers treated diabetic mice that had high blood sugar and damaged kidneys. They treated one group of mice with stem cells. After three weeks they were shown to be producing higher levels of mouse insulin than untreated mice and had lower blood sugar levels. The injections also appeared to stop damaging changes taking place in the glomeruli, the bulb-like structures in the kidneys that filter the blood.

The doctor's overseeing the research plan to carry out trials in patients with diabetes. Physicians will be selecting patients with diabetes whose kidneys are beginning to fail. They hope to determine whether giving the patients large numbers of their own adult stem cells will lower blood sugar, increase secretion of insulin from the pancreas and improve the function of the kidney.

Pancreatic beta cells produced from a patient's own bone marrow could be used to treat diabetes, without the need for immunosuppression. Immunosuppression is used to prevent transplanted cells from being destroyed by the body. This is why Type 1 diabetes develops in the first place. This is precisely the work Dr. Faustman has been pioneering with Massachusetts General Hospital. I'm a little scared to ask, but has anybody witnessed how they extract bone marrow in the first place?

According to a recent study, a high fat diet plus a molecule called resveratrol reduced the incidence of death significantly in mice.

The experiment compared two groups of mice, both consuming high fat diets. However one group was fed a high fat diet plus resveratrol. After 76 weeks into the study, 22% of the mice on the high fat diet (alone) were dead. The mice that consumed the high fat diet plus resveratrol had no deaths. Resveratrol is found in the skin of red grapes. It is also an element of red wine, which may explain why the French have a much lower rate of coronary heart disease, despite their pension for foods high in saturated fat. As the mice aged, resveratrol seemed to control blood sugar, improve balance, and assist in maintaining healthy liver tissue.

Okay, in all fairness - I don't scurry around the catacombs of the New York Subway. I don't scavenge for food in the alleys behind busy restaurants and I don't leave waste where waste DOES NOT belong. I am no lab rat. However this study and the culinary customs of the French give me hope, I'd like to think that what I lack in dietary discipline can be offset with a fine Chianti. Cheers to resveratrol!

An artificial pancreas is a machine with a real-time glucose sensor and an insulin delivery system. This will enable a diabetic to maintain normal glucose and HbA1c levels by automatically providing the right amount of insulin at the right time, just as the pancreas does in people without the disease.

According to Dr. Aaron Kowalski, Director of Strategic Research Projects for JDRF, "When a person has type 1 diabetes, maintaining an acceptable blood sugar level is a constant struggle. Tight control is very difficult for most, and as a result diabetes patients run the risk of developing severe and even deadly complications. The artificial pancreas will revolutionize diabetes care because it carries the potential of eliminating these complications and easing the tremendous burden of diabetes."

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation launched the JDRF Artificial Pancreas Project in late 2005 to expedite the availability of this rapidly emerging technology for people with type 1 diabetes. Through research and advocacy, the JDRF project aims to speed regulatory approval, health insurance coverage, and clinician adoption of promising new artificial pancreas technologies.

Is anybody else excited about this? It won't be long before I can eighty-six the nuisance of checking my blood sugars and leave it up to the algorithms of a little robot software guy, behind the scenes. Okay, not exactly-but still, it would be awesome!

The beneficial effects of yoga on diabetes are falling into favor all across America. The practice of postures can rejuvenate the insulin producing cells in the pancreas. According to studies, the postures in a relaxed manner, without exertion, accompanied by yogic meditation and breathing, helps most patients to improve blood sugar control. Lotus anyone?.

Needless to say, while Yoga cannot "cure" diabetes, it can offer tactics to mitigate the daily hardships we endure and implement the lifestyle changes to keep stress manageable. It may also help offer a sense of control and well-being.

Ladies and gentleman, I know you are asking, "Why should diabetics practice Yoga?" Without turning this into a Letterman Top 10 list, I'll give you a bouquet of tantalizing reasons and let you handpick your favorites:

Reason 1: Yoga has been proven helpful for weight management as well as blood sugar control.
Reason 2: Yoga benefits any age, race, gender or level of fitness.
Reason 3: Yoga is safe - no "jerky" movements or rapid heart rate.
Reason 4: You receive the benefit of exercise without the sweat.
Reason 5: You become stronger, more supple, more coordinated.
Reason 6: You feel healthy, young and radiant.
Reason 7: You can go at your own pace.
Reason 8: You are more in touch with gravity and with how you breathe.
Reason 9: The postures energize and refresh rather than tire you.

For what it's worth, I strongly encourage all to give Yoga a try. At the very least, you will have an hours worth of Zen relaxation and end your class with a greater sense of peace. Do yourself a favor and bring it to center.