America Becoming Diabetes Nation

The media was full of stories recently about the nearly doubling in the number of Americans with diabetes in the past decade.  (Here's an Associated Press Report)

More than 90% of those cases are Type 2 Diabetes, which is directly linked to the poor diet and exercise habits of many Americans.  We are literally eating ourselves to death.  The old school lunch paradigm of providing cheap high carb food to poor children is piling up on the cheap McDonald's, Jack in the Box and other fast food junk they are eating at home.  Regular soda has so much sugar in it that each can is like eating a candy bar.

At Team Shebly, we focus on Type I Diabetes because of the unmitigated cruelty it's seeming randomness and incurability visits on families and the patients for life.  Type 2 Diabetes is largely preventable: eat less, move more.  It's not rocket science, and the vast number who get it because they aren't willing to sacrifice and discipline themselves are obscuring those who have Type 2 as a complication from more serious health problems.

This is a perfect example of why Liz's work at our children's elementary school is so important.  She teaches Jr. Jazzercise to the entire student body of some 600 children once a week.  From kindergarten through 5th grade, they come to the multipurpose room with their teachers in bunches of about four classes each for a 30-minute dance-based workout tailored to their age-appropriate abilities. This program is funded entirely by the Parent Teacher Organization with no funding from the local school district.  It helps fulfill the expanded district mandate that teachers, schooled in academic education of our children, engage them in additional minutes of physical activity each week.

Liz's work not only gets the kids moving in an organized way to popular music they know and love, but also shows them that there are more ways to move and stay fit than organized sports, at which many children are not adept or inclined.  She teaches them about various muscle groups, how the body works together and how what they eat impacts how they feel.

This is particularly important for the 4th and 5th graders who don't receive a set physical education program, but are tested on their ability to achieve various physical fitness standards.  How crazy is this: The school district provides a physical education teacher for first through 3rd graders.  The PE requirement for 4th and 5th graders is up to their regular classroom teacher.  But the 5th graders are tested near the end of the school year on their ability to reach various state-mandated physical fitness standards.  Without the PTO funding Jr. Jazzercise, these kids would be totally set up to fail. That's why Liz has added a second 30-minute session a week for the 5th graders focusing on core strength training.  Last year, the teachers reported that our school saw huge improvements in the physical fitness testing of our 5th grade, and that our school was among the best in the entire district.

All of this ties back to Type 2 Diabetes.  A lot of these kids eat late dinners of greasy fast food provided by parents who are commuting long distances, can't afford home-cooked meals or are trying to cram too much into their schedules to pay attention to healthy eating habits.  Kids spend lots of time watching TV, playing on computers, text messaging their friends. Predators have made neighborhoods unsafe for children to ride their bikes or skate after school. Urban designers put high-speed four-lane roads through neighborhoods and use narrow sidewalks as the "safe route to school."

Everything has an impact.  Learn about Type 2 Diabetes and how to protect yourself and your family from this disease.  I can't imagine why anyone would choose to live with the chronic threat to their future that my daughter faces through no fault of her own.

>>The CDC report on soaring Type 2 rates>>

>>Market Watch report: Moving more staves off Type 2>>

Artificial Pancreas Work Progresses in Human Trials

The University of Virginia has announced very positive results from their first round human trials of a closed loop artificial pancreas developed solely through  a computer simulation model rather than the traditional animal trials.

This is key for two main reasons:

1. The five patients that received the system that automatically monitors their blood glucose levels and adjusts it based upon a prescribed insulin delivery regime responded very well.  Great news for people like Shelby who someday hope to manage their Type I Diabetes with this type of device.
2. The Food and Drug Administration accepted the computer simulation in approving the human trials without requiring years of animal testing first.  This has tons of implications both for the animals involved (a long-standing ethical issue in all medical research) but also in terms of cost of research and the speed with which laboratory hypotheses can be proven and converted into beneficial tools for patients.

>> READ THE FULL RELEASE HERE>>

Developing a 'closed loop' system, also called an artificial pancreas, is sort of the holy grail in the management of Type I Diabetes.

• It would eliminate the need for painful finger prick blood glucose testing.
• It also would eliminate the specter of dangerous overnight low blood glucose episodes, which can be particularly dangerous for patients who live by themselves.
• It allows blood glucose levels to be dialed in much more precisely within a 'normal' range thereby delaying or preventing devastating side impact of diabetes, such as liver and kidney damage, blindness and circulatory problems.

This research was funded in major part by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and coordinated globally by the Artificial Pancreas Consortium. 

Green Tea May Delay Type I Onset

The University of Georgia School of Dentistry discovered a correlation between an antioxidant present in green tea and the delayed onset of Type I Diabetes in mice genetically prone to the disease.  The discovery came while researchers were studying primarily another autoimmune disease - Sjogren's Syndrome, which affects the function of salvatory glands.

>>READ THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE>>

The research is interesting and heartening, particularly because the green tea antioxidant EGCGwas introduced to the mice diluted in water, as it would commonly be administered by drinking tea.  It's also important because now we have knowledge about a commonly occurring compound that appears to have a positive impact on a disease that is very difficult to prevent and currently impossible to cure.

However, with several approaches to delaying the onset of Type I Diabetes, the study requires knowledge that the subject is prone to the disease.  This is the conundrum for researchers: how do you find human test subjects to move the research to the next level, or how do you apply it when you can't reliably predict natural onset of Type I Diabetes.

Researchers have identified genetic markers that indicate a predisposition to develop Type I Diabetes, but not everyone with it eventually develops the disease. Applying or even testing prophylactic treatments requires a fairly wide scale screening process of potential subjects, namely infants.  The double blind nature of scientific experimentation also means that some children will develop the disease while in the study, but how do you weed out those who never run into the unknown environmental links believed to trigger the genetic cascade into Type I Diabetes?

Thank you to the researchers at the University of Georgia for this important work.  It's another link in the ongoing work into discovering how natural compound can protect the human body from going haywire.  But EGCG is not a cure-all that will wipe out Type I by itself.  Stay tuned for more research in to the applications of this new knowledge.