Looks like 'shrooms might become a swanky and healthy thing to do! The fungi is affectionately called the Maitake mushroom, and literally means "dancing mushroom. Research has found it lowers blood pressure, abdominal obesity, and lipids in the blood.

Maitake Products plans to target the maitake (grifola frondosa) mushroom to treat metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a common precondition for both coronary disease and type 2 diabetes. The condition is characterized by a group of metabolic risk factors including: abdominal obesity, atherogenic dyslipidemia, high blood pressure and insulin resistance. With the growing number of people affected by these conditions, Maitake claims there is significant market potential for its drug, SX-Fraction.

A preliminary clinical study was conducted among 19 patients with type 2 diabetes. Patients taking 9 tablets of SX-Fraction (per day) for 2 months found that it significantly reduced fasting blood glucose, triglycerides, and body weight. The possibility of maitake mushroom as a safe, natural agent for treatment of type 2 diabetes, Syndrome X and insulin resistance has been examined for the past several years and will soon prove to be a therapeutic dancing mushroom in days to come. Yeah man.

Would you like to reduce your daily insulin requirements by a third or stop all diabetes medicines? Lofty goals, yes - but given the Eat To Live program - it's quite possible.

Regardless of my attempts to downgrade insulin dose in the last 15 years - my blood sugars would not take the hint. Had I known Dr. Fuhrman had figured this one out long ago - instead of badgering feats of diabetic noncompliance I would have picked up his book, Eat To Live. Dr. Fuhrman explains the best diet for humans to live longer in good health is also the best diet for one with diabetes. A diet comprised mostly in nature's perfect foods-green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds and limited fresh fruit, allows for people to eat as much as they want and still lose weight, drop their cholesterol, and their blood pressure relatively quickly.

The Eat To Live dietary style is a vegetable-based diet designed to maximize nutrient per calorie density. It is the most effective treatment for those with diabetes, more effective than drugs. For a type 2 diabetic, this approach has resulted in complete reversal of the diabetic condition in the vast majority of patients and for a type 1 diabetic it solves the problems with excessive highs and lows and prevents the typical dangerous complications that too frequently befall those with diabetes. Joel Fuhrman, M.D is a board certified family physician specializing in nutritional medicine for overweight and diabetic patents.

Billboard.com has announced the death of Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Syd Barrett from complications of diabetes. According to Billboard, Barrett left Pink Floyd over thirty years ago due to mental health issues, and lived the remainder of his life in seclusion with his mother in Cambridge, England.

Known for psychedelic rock, Pink Floyd, with Barrett and members Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason, gained an international cult-like following due to its innovative beyond the boundaries rock.

By some accounts, Barrett's LSD drug use created mental problems for him and he eventually retired from the band to live in his hometown of Cambridge. Pink Floyd band members dedicated two songs to Barrett, who was seen as influential in all that Pink Floyd symbolized and position it held in the rock world, with Shine on You Crazy Diamond and Wish You Were Here.

At the Live 8 benefit, Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason performed Wish You Were Here in Barrett's honor. Barrett was 60.