When our food tastes better, we might eat less. Maybe that doesn’t sound logical. But a new study of 2,436 overweight or obese people shows that at least some things that stimulate our sense of taste can help us to lose weight, which almost everyone with type 2 diabetes wants to do.

Alan Hirsch, MD, studied a variety of calorie-free seasonings and sweeteners that that can stimulate the sense of taste. Dr. Hirsch, the founder and neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, presented his findings at the recent annual meeting of The Endocrine Society.

The people in the study sprinkled savory or sweet crystals on their food before eating their meals during a six-month study period. While they knew that the flavors were either salty or sweet, they didn’t know anything more about them.

[Read more →]

The idea of intelligent design might or might not explain the universe. But it certainly applies to Arkray’s Glucocard X-Meter and X-Sensors.

Two years ago Arkray of Kyoto, Japan, bought out Hypoguard, which developed the original Glucocard blood glucose meters, and is now Arkray USA in Minneapolis. While the term “Hypoguard” is a great name for a line of blood glucose meters, Arkray means “radiance of life” in Japanese.

The design of the newest Glucocard system is intelligent partly because it’s clearly made for you to take with you everywhere. It’s light and thin.

[Read more →]

Lancing devices and lancets don’t get the respect they deserve. Not from those of us who have diabetes and need to test our blood glucose and not from the manufacturers.

Until recently we have had few choices, and most of them were nothing to write about. Meters we have in abundance, but it is the lancet where — if  we were automobiles –  the rubber meets the road.

You may not always get what you pay for, but you almost never get more. The best lancing system is the most expensive.

The Pelikan Sun electronic lancing device is far and away the best — and also far and away the most expensive. Even though Pelikan Technologies recently reduced the price of the system to $199, that’s not a price that casual testers would enjoy.
[Read more →]

Just when it looked like we could relax about the amount of salt we use, it seems that we may need to limit how much of it we use after all.

I used to trust the recommendations of the American medical establishment that we must reduce the amount of salt we use in order to control hypertension (high blood pressure). Early last year, in fact, I wrote here how we can reduce it to help control our blood pressure.

But in “The (Political) Science of Salt” iconoclastic science writer Gary Taubes exposed the myth that if you, “Eat less salt…you will lower your blood pressure and live a longer, healthier life.” Many of us with diabetes believed this myth — with the prodding of our doctors — because high blood pressure goes hand in hand with diabetes. High blood pressure — hypertension — and diabetes are two of the main components of the so-called “metabolic syndrome” or “syndrome x.”

[Read more →]

Any time is a good time to lose weight if your body mass index is over 25. So I’m surprised to learn that there is a best time.

A large study that the professional journal Diabetes Care will publish in its October issue indicates that if you have diabetes, the best time to lose weight is right after your diagnosis. Even if you gain back that weight, by taking off the pounds then you have a better chance of keeping your blood glucose and blood pressure levels under reasonably good control.

The study comes from Kaiser Permanente in Oregon and Washington, one of the country’s largest health maintenance organizations with about 480,000 members. Its Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon, has taken the lead in analyzing the electronic health records of its members. This is one HMO that knows how the improved health of its members can improve the organization’s bottom line at the same time — and acts on that knowledge.
[Read more →]

The diabetes drug Byetta can help us control our blood glucose and lose weight. That’s huge — and just the beginning of the story.

Full disclosure: I own 100 shares of stock in Amylin, the company that developed Byetta.

About a year ago, after the Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association in Chicago, I reported here how Byetta can reduce our risk of heart attacks and strokes. These are the most common and deadly complications of diabetes.

Now a study presented at the ADA’s recent Scientific Sessions in San Francisco indicates that the reduced risk to our hearts may lead to previously unheard of benefits. Taking Byetta can lower our chance of dying compared with other diabetes drugs. The Times says that the chance of dying while taking Byetta is about 75 percent lower than on the other drugs.
[Read more →]

You can conquer sleep apnea. I know you can because I conquered a most severe form of it. And I’ve now even given away both of my continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines, which is the standard treatment for overweight people who have sleep apnea.

About half of all of us who have diabetes also suffer from sleep apnea. While not all of us who have diabetes suffer from it, everyone with sleep apnea suffers. People lose their jobs because they nod off to sleep at work rather than at night. People crash their cars because they fall asleep at the wheel. Even those who don’t get fired or have traffic accidents suffer by being sleepy much of the time.

My fear of killing myself and my passengers by nodding off during an afternoon drive was in fact what finally persuaded me to seek treatment. Four years ago, when I finally began to get my sleep apnea under control with a CPAP machine, I wrote my first article about it. That article, for Diabetes Wellness News, is now online.
[Read more →]

Whenever Consumer Reports evaluates blood glucose meters, it’s big news. Three people already emailed me to ask what I think about the magazine’s review. And on Thursday I just got my copy of the September 2008 issue in which the review appears.

With a monthly circulation of about 4 million copies, what Consumer Reports writes about meters matters. This is one of the dozen biggest magazines in the country and the only one that prides itself on its editorial independence in accepting no advertising. And I’m not aware of any other general interest publication that regularly rates our meters.

Its new review rated 13 meters from eight different manufacturers. This is the same number of meters as it rated in its previous review for its August 2005 issue. But the meter market has changed so much in the past three years that almost all of the meters rated in the new review are different.
[Read more →]