Until now our doctors have lacked an effective way to predict who is at the greatest risk of neuropathy. Usually we find out too late — when irreversible nerve damage has already occurred.

Diabetic neuropathy is the most common microvascular complication we have. More than half of all people with diabetes develop neuropathy. It is a complication in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

In the past few years the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two drugs — Cymbalta and Lyrica — for managing the pain of diabetic neuropathy. These drug help many of us. But wouldn’t it be a lot better for us if we could prevent diabetic neuropathy?
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All over the world people with diabetes are slacking off how well they control their diabetes. Their A1C levels are climbing to 7.0 percent or more, apparently blessed by scientific research.

Researchers designed the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes trial, universally known as ACCORD, hoped to prove that we would have fewer heart attacks and strokes when we able to bring our A1C levels below 6.0 percent. Instead, they were surprised to discover that 257 patients in the intensive-therapy group died, compared with 203 patients in the standard-therapy group. Consequently, they terminated the intensive therapy regime 17 months before the scheduled end of the study.
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We now have an early warning that can help people with diabetes prevent heart attacks and strokes. Until now, for many people the first symptom of a heart attack has been having one.

I don’t think that I have ever written about the complications of diabetes without offering some way to deal with them. That would be just too negative for either you or me, and I am not going to start being negative now.

Heart attacks are serious business, but we can prevent them. People with diabetes especially need to prevent them.
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A year ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug to treat type 2 diabetes. But few of us ever heard of it.

Until now. Studies presented at the annual convention of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists in Houston on Friday finally caught our attention.

The senior author of one of those studies spoke at length with me at the convention. Yehuda Handelsman, an endocrinologist in private practice in Tarzana, California, led a 16-week multi-center international study comparing how well Welchol (colesevelam HCl), Avandia, and Januvia did. In the study they randomized 169 people to evaluate the effects of these three oral diabetes medications on glycemic control and lipid profiles when added to metformin.
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When he examined the young lifeguard, he saw that almost every square inch of her body was well tanned. She had been wearing practically nothing when she worked at the beach.

Neil Binkley, M.D., told me about his patient because she had the highest physiologic level of vitamin D in her system of anyone he ever saw. Her level was 80 ng/ml.

I had to look up the word “physiologic” to make sure what Dr. Binkley meant. Physiologic in the sense that he’s using it is “something that is normal, neither due to anything pathologic nor significant in terms of causing illness,” according to a medical dictionary.
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This week’s convention of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists in Houston is winding down this afternoon. The Health Central Network sent me here to report on it.

About 1350 endocrinologists and related health professionals are here along with 88 companies exhibiting their products. The doctors presented 170 posters and 200 abstracts.

Now that I’ve gone to the meetings that I needed to attend and talked with the doctors I needed to interview, I’ve got time to start writing about them. In the next few days you can expect several articles that I am developing out of my interviews at the convention and separately with a company headquartered in Houston.
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The annual convention of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists — those medical specialists who treat diabetes — is underway in Houston. I’m covering the event for The Health Central Network.

The convention took over the George R. Brown Convention Center in the downtown of America’s fourth largest city. The convention center is so big that after Hurricane Katrina 7,000 refugees lived here.

In the mob of today’s convention you might imagine my surprise that the first person I made eye contact with asked if I was David Mendosa. The person who asked was Sarah Senn, who I had sent several photos for an article that she wrote about me. But we had never previously met in person.
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Based on what I’ve read recently, some of which I have reported here, I’ve grown more and more wary of the wisdom of taking supplements. Few of the them seem to help.

And now comes a new study indicating that the two most common supplements can actually work against us. Those supplements are vitamins C and E.

It seems that we have a choice of exercising or taking large doses of those supplements. We know that exercise has lots of good effects like increasing our sensitivity to insulin, which is of great importance to all of us with diabetes.
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When you drink white tea, you may lose weight. And if you drink it without any caloric sweetener, it sure won’t make you gain weight.

Researchers in Germany showed in experiments reported in the June 2009 issue of Nutrition & Metabolism that white tea stops the generation of new fat cells and at the same time stimulates the burning of fat. When they grew human fat cells in a laboratory, they also found that after treating them with an extract of white tea, those cells had less fat in them.

Led by nutritionist Marc Winnefeld of the German health food company Beiersdorf AG, the researchers reported their findings as “White Tea extract induces lipolytic activity and inhibits adipogenesis in human subcutaneous (pre)-adipocytes.” The free full-text of the provisional PDF is online.
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The sickest people that some endocrinologists see have very low levels of Vitamin D. The sicker they are the lower their levels. What’s your Vitamin D level?

Australian endocrinologists, specialists in treating diabetes, performed a prospective study of the vitamin D status in ICU patients referred to the department of endocrinology at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, between January 2007 and January 2008. The mean serum level of Vitamin D among the 42 patients they examined was 16 ng/ml.

Three of these patients died. Each of them had undetectable levels of Vitamin D.

The Australian endocrinologists published their findings as correspondence in the April 30, 2009, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Only the extract is free online. But I purchased the full-text for only $10.
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