Note: The contents of this blog are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice or substitute for professional care. For medical emergencies, dial 911!
Posts with tag blood sugar
Posted Aug 30th 2007 3:25PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Drugs, Products, Care
Ever heard of MedCo Health Solutions? It's not a household name like the big pharmaceutical companies Novo, Glaxo etc. However, MedCo, which happens to be in the prescription benefit management business, is a large and powerful company. Now it's about to become even larger: the company is
poised to pay $1.5 billion for PolyMedica Corporation, the nation's biggest supplier of diabetes-related products.
According to a
Forbes report on the deal, PolyMedica has nearly
one million patients using its products. Its product line includes Liberty Healthcare brand, blood glucose test kits and meters, lancet kits, insulin and the like. The
Forbes article says the move is basically a smart one on the part of MedCo: it can cash in on the growing demand(14.5 % growth, annually!) for diabetes supplies. MedCo's chief exec, David Snow, told
Forbes he anticipates the purchase could make his company (indirectly) the supplier of diabetes treatment products to
half of all insured Americans with diabetes.
Factoid: ads for PolyMedica star "Cocoon" and "Seinfeld" actor Wilford Brimley.
Posted Aug 29th 2007 10:19AM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Daily News
Yes, you read correctly.
Low-speed car chase. Not something you see in the news too often, right?
Jacob Kells (30) is from Santa Rosa, CA. He has diabetes. Last Thursday, Kells got behind the wheel of a rented U-Haul truck. Oh, what a bad idea. He was obviously having low blood sugar issues because he caused several minor hit-and-run crashes that morning. Kells would not respond to police calls for him to pull over. Result:
the cops had to tail him all, slowly, all the way from Redwood City to Gilroy.
When the police finally caught up with him, Kells was reportedly sweating and incoherent. The officers, obviously aware his state was diabetes-related, gave him glucose paste then got him to hospital, pronto. He was later arrested and taken in for psychological assessment - which I guess means there may be something else going on here other than low blood sugar.
Hats off to the officers of the Redwood City California Highway Patrol for recognizing the signs of low blood sugar and reacting accordingly. That is, for understanding the medical basis for Kells' behavior - not assuming the guy was just drunk or high.
Posted Aug 28th 2007 11:41PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Adult Onset, Lifestyle, Drugs, Personalities
You've heard about the
sports stars and the
rock stars who succeed in life despite suffering from diabetes. Now, here's something a little more unusual: a circus acrobat! Dolly Jacobs is Circus Sarasota's "Queen of the Air." She recently gave an interview to the
Bradenton Herald about her
life in the circus.
Trim and petite like a dancer, Jacobs was diagnosed ten years ago. How did it happen? She had the warning signs most type 1s experience: weight loss and a killer thirst she just could not quench. Her mom already had type 1, so during a routine office visit, Jacobs asked the doc to check her blood sugar too. Whoa. It was 260 - way, way above normal. Jacobs was diagnosed not with type 1, but with a rarer form sometimes dubbed "type 1.5" or Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of the Adult (LADA). LADA is basically the same as type 1 diabetes, but develops later in life.
So how does one deal with diabetes when your job involves flying through the air with the greatest of ease? Low blood sugar is easy, says Jacobs. Correct it with a soda or juice. High blood sugar is tougher. She says she can go as high as 500 or 600 just from adrenaline. So, just like any other athlete, she depends on testing several times daily and she wears an insulin pump - but not when she's performing. Eating healthy - lean meats, fruits and veg - are important too, she says.
Click here to read more. Kudos, by the way, to the journalist who wrote this article, Roberta C. Nelson, for taking time out to identify the different forms of diabetes and to explain the dangers associated with high vs. low blood sugar. Great!
Posted Aug 25th 2007 12:07PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Products, Care
Medical gadget manufacturer
Medtronic has teamed up with LifeScan, maker of blood glucose meters. The powers-that-be at those companies say they want to introduce a fab new blood glucose meter to the US market. The meters will be developed by LifeScan for Medtronic and should be reasonably high-tech, with wireless transmission of test results to Medtronic's MiniMed Paradigm pumps or the Guardian REAL-Time continuous monitoring system. Tying it all together: Medtronic's CareLink diabetes management software. The plan is to get the meters on the market by early 2008.
The press release announcing the deal made me laugh. It stresses that, in addition to their alliance, Medtronic and LifeScan "will also educate people about the importance of insulin pump therapy and proactive diabetes management." Oh, ha ha. Translation: "buy our stuff. Please!" It's okay Medtronic and LifeScan. Just be yourselves. You exist to make money. We understand that. Just be honest about it and spare us the whole "education" angle.
Posted Aug 22nd 2007 1:31PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Type 2, Support, Care
The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) has
released its new medical guidelines for diabetes. Needless to say, the 66-page guidelines are intended for your doc,
not for you. Unless you are having trouble getting to sleep at night...
But they're important for you to know about. Very. The guidelines are the first reference point for physicians determining the best course of care for diabetes patients. Blood sugar, blood pressure, type 1, type 2, pregnancy, metabolism, prevention etc etc. It's all in there.
So what's new? According to AACE president Dr. Richard Hellman, the focus is, for the first time, on patient safety - specifically, reducing the incidence of medical errors involving diabetes patients. "These guidelines are the first that specifically point to how best to protect the patient with diabetes against mistakes and misjudgments by all those who directly or indirectly impact their diabetes care, including themselves," said Dr. Hellman. "Patient safety is not a given."
The guidelines are being published as a supplement to the latest issue of
Endocrine Practice (May/June 2007), the journal of the AACE. They can also be accessed online.
Click here to view the pdf.
Posted Aug 22nd 2007 11:17AM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Type 2, Daily News, Complications
Yes, I'm back on the topic of diabetes and car crash liabiity. Here's a case from Montana that's become particularly ugly. Eleven-year-old Cady Tucker was killed in a head-on collision five years ago. The driver of the car that caused the crash has diabetes. Now, usually in these situations the diabetic (sorry, BetterCell!) driver was experiencing low blood sugar. But in this case, the driver had extremely high blood sugar.
Ever since the crash, the girl's mom, Pat Tucker, has been trying to press criminal charges against the woman. Tucker likens the crash to a DUI. The driver, she says, was
"drunk on sugar." The Tuckers have even founded an organization devoted to changing the law:
People Against Impaired Drivers.
Now Tucker is very upset because she was not able to get to court before last week, when the statute of limitations ran out on the case. "I couldn't believe a crime wasn't committed when a child's life was taken," says Tucker.
There's a ton of sympathy out there for grieving mom, Tucker. But no one's going to bat for her. Attorney General Mike McGrath has said that while he's sorry for Tucker, the accident was just that: an accident, and not a case of negligent homicide. "We don't put people in prison for high blood sugar," says McGrath.
Posted Aug 21st 2007 2:04PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 2, Services, Care
The
Chicago-Sun Times just ran a piece about area dentists who are doing their bit for type 2 diabetes prevention. These docs are
screening all patients with gum disease for high blood sugar. They hope this will help with early detection, since gum disease is a risk factor for diabetes. (In fact, gum disease is a risk factor for tons of health issues, running the gamut from minor to life-threatening.)
The paper profiles, among others, dentist Dr. Ronald Schefdore. Whenever Schefdore gets patients coming in with gum disease, he automatically gives them blood tests that measure cholesterol and blood sugar levels, as well as inflammation. Schefdore describes a success story involving one patient who, thanks to the tests, got an early diagnosis of pre-diabetic symptoms and now, with the help of his PCP, has his blood sugar back under control.
Schfdore has also trained about five hundred other dentists (wow) how to collect blood samples using the finger-prick method. "If every dentist practiced this way," he comments, "we could improve the health of the world overnight."
This is preventive care in action. People like this are raising the bar for everyone. Cheers!
Posted Aug 20th 2007 8:40AM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Daily News, Opinion, Complications
Wow. I'm floored. Not
every diabetic experiencing hypoglycemia in a pubic place becomes a victim of police brutality. A Texas woman with diabetes was recently discovered in her car on the side of a road by a police deputy. She was incoherent, talking to herself. No, the deputy did
not drag her in to the station for DUI.
Constable's Deputy Russell Whitton, intelligent guy, realized something was up and used the lady's cell phone to call the most recently missed call. This put him in touch with a relative, and he was able to establish that the lady had been reported missing, is diabetic, and was about to go into shock. The deputy gave her LifeSavers to help raise her blood sugar and called for an ambulance. .
In the course of blogging for TDB I've read I-don't-know-how-many news stories about diabetics being manhandled by police during hypo episodes. The typical scenario is this: person's blood sugar drops. Person sways, loses way, crashes car, acts incoherent or all of the above. Cops are called or happen along. Cops mistakenly assume symptoms are due to drunkenness or a drug-induced high. So they proceed to arrest said innocent citizen, who may resist, sparking actions of police brutality. The most recent high-profile case involved
"Mr. Natural Universe," Doug Burns.
And then this story came along. Just when I was becoming super-cynical and irreversibly biased against the police, too. Aww. Thanks, Deputy Whitton!
Posted Aug 19th 2007 2:28PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Type 2, Daily News
In a case of stunning ineptitude, staff at an Orange County branch of Bank of America
locked in an elderly diabetic woman after closing at the end of the day on Wednesday. The woman, Marian R. Prescher (73), went to the bank late Wednesday to access the contents of a storage box she keeps there. The bank shut up shop at 6 p.m., and employees apparently forgot to check the private room that she was in before leaving.
Around that time - I'm not clear on whether it was before she was locked in or perhaps as a result of being locked in - Prescher's blood sugar dropped into the danger zone. Fortunately, Prescher was discovered around midnight by a cleaning crew, whose members found her in diabetic shock - "unconscious and cold to the touch," according to a spokesman for the OC Sheriff's Department. The woman was treated in hospital for hypoglycemia and later released.
The is pretty serious. If she had not been found when she was, Prescher could have died. A friend told a reporter that Prescher's blood sugar had dropped to 20, which is dangerously low.
A statement came from Bank of America on Friday to say the incident is under investigation. I'm thinking they are justifiably sweating over the bad publicity this has brought the bank.
Posted Aug 18th 2007 3:07PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Daily News, Personalities
Isn't it amazing that even toddlers can operate computers and cell phones these days? Alex Merriam lives in Pleasanton, Texas. Alex is only two-years-old, but he
helped save his dad's life recently. His father, William Merriam, has had type 1 diabetes since he was only four. Last Friday, William's blood sugar got dangerously low and and he fell unconscious in a chair. Alex was the only one in the house with him at the time.
Alex's mom, D'anna, was worried when she kept trying to call her husband. No one answered. In the end, aware that a hypoglycemic episode could have hit William, she had her father try calling too. Eventually, Alex - all of two-years-old, mind you - got the ringing cell phone out of his dad's bag and answered it. He told his grandpa that his dad was "asleep" and then hung up. Kids do the darndest things! The grandfather called back and, yet again, Alex picked up. This time the boy took the phone over to his father and it was clear that dad was not responding at all. Emergency services were alerted and an ambulance arrived not long after that.
After recovering, dad William said "It's nice he doesn't know what's wrong, but knew enough to tell the right person at the right time." Cute story.
Posted Aug 15th 2007 2:01PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Type 2, Opinion, Support, Care
Kingman, Arizona, resident Joseph Zarate made it into his local newspaper recently. Zarate was in the US Marines for four and a half years back in the day. He now depends on the US Veterans Administration for his health care services. Right now
he believes he's being shortchanged.
Zarate has type 2 diabetes. The VA gives him Metformin and testing strips to do blood sugar tests. However, he says he thinks it's a double standard that he only gets fifty testing strips per ninety day period. He says he needs 180 per month so that he can test himself three times daily. He says his VA doc told him he should be testing himself that often. That's why he's upset. In the meantime, he's been buying extra testing strips from a local pharmacy at his own expense. Meanwhile, a VA spokeswoman says it's VA policy: type 1 patients get 200 testing strips per ninety day period, while type 2s get only fifty per ninety day period.
Check out the mean comments from readers responding to this article. Some readers criticize the VA, others Zarate, and one guy even takes the time to criticize the journalist who did the story.
Why all this anger, people? I'm mystified. In the end, it looks like a simple case of institutional ineptitude. Does Zarate, a type 2 diabetes, really need to test his blood sugar three times daily? Probably not. And if not, why did his doctor tell him to do that? Or maybe he misunderstood his doctor's instructions. In any case, the VA has a responsibility to communicate better with patients about what their medical needs are. This guy was obviously trying to take care of his health, but was having a hard time getting answers. I felt sorry for him.
Posted Aug 11th 2007 8:48PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 2, Lifestyle, Care
Gastric bypass or banding surgery has become known as
an effective measure for treating type 2 diabetes. What has put it in the news, of late, is the fact that
gastric bypass is incredibly successful. Many recipients who've gone under the knife respond not only with extreme weight loss (of course - that's what the surgery is designed to do!), but also a normalization of blood sugar levels. Sometimes the reaction is so positive that patients can stop taking blood sugar controlling meds.
Case in point: Marlene Zytcer (57) and her daughter Aimee (31) of Phoenix, Arizona. Marlene and Aimee recently
both had gastric banding surgery at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center. Prior to the surgery, both mom and daughter were doing poorly health-wise. They were both obese and fighting
heart disease and type 2 diabetes. They say they both have a genetic predisposition to those conditions.
Continue reading Mom and daughter diabetics benefit from gastric surgery
Posted Aug 11th 2007 4:09PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 1, Daily News, Opinion, Support, Care
As
Bev observed in a post yesterday, California schools will now be required to ensure that diabetic kids get their medical needs met during school hours.
Parents are relieved by the settlement, which was reached between the California Department of Education and two school districts (on one side) and four families with diabetic children, working in conjunction with the
American Diabetes Association (ADA).
It's a thorny issue. If you require by law that kids be in school during specified hours, you'd better make darn sure you can meet their needs while they're there. As Michelle Ferry, mom of a seven-year-old boy with diabetes, observed "If I had a child in a wheelchair, they wouldn't expect me to come in and take them out of a wheelchair" as necessary throughout the school day. Michelle, you see,
was required to drop everything and come running to the school when her son needed a shot because there was no one at the school willing/qualified/permitted to administer it.
While she has a point, you could also argue that helping a (developmentally normal) child in and out of a wheelchair doesn't require special training. Helping a child monitor and adjust his or her blood sugar level most certainly
does. Understandably, school administrators were, and remain, concerned about legal liability. Teachers also have a right to be concerned.
Continue reading Diabetes and schools: a thorny ethical problem
Posted Aug 11th 2007 2:24PM by Diane Rixon
Filed under: Type 2, Research, Care
Far from being inert and unchanging, a mere scaffolding to which the body's muscles and organs attach themselves, bones change constantly. Old bone cells die. New ones are born. But that's not all. According to an exciting new discovery, bones play a role in
regulating blood sugar levels and fat deposits.
How is this possible? Bones act like a kind of endocrine organ, releasing osteocalcin, a hormone that influences bone formation. This hormone also increases both insulin production and the body's insulin sensitivity. It also reduces fat stores. Basically, osteocalcin levels in the bones are linked to blood sugar and body fat levels, and there is some sort of interaction back and forth.
It's a surprising finding for the uninitiated. However, some scientists are saying it makes sense when you think about it. Says Ronald Kahn, director of Harvard's Joslin Diabetes Center, "Obviously there does need to be some coordination between skeletal growth and body mass. If you carry around extra weight, your bones need to hold up under the extra pressure, so it's not surprising that your bones have a sense of body fat."
Continue reading Discovery: bones help regulate insulin production
Posted Aug 8th 2007 7:12AM by Allie Beatty
Filed under: Type 2, Adult Onset, Lifestyle, Research
A study has explained why sleep loss may contribute to the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Think appetite.
The study found that sleep loss reduced glycogen release from the liver. Since the patient was still awake, requiring energy (and none was being supplied) - the islets withheld production of insulin to sustain existing blood sugar. The aftermath of this suspended glucose metabolism resulted in increased hunger. Yikes.
This study may hint at reasons behind the dubious freshman fifteen for a lot of college students. Can the body adapt to being up all night studying and snacking without jolting the counter regulatory response of metabolism?
Next Page >
