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Diabetes Research

Diabetes Medication

The Vitamin D Window

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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People With Diabetes

Endocrinologists Meet

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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Diabetes Medication, Exercise For Diabetes

Choosing Exercise or Antioxidants

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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Diabetes Medication

Diabetes Drug Dangers

A single research report that found risks in one of the medications that we take to control our diabetes would warrant our attention. But when three separate studies find serious side effects from all our major drugs, the time is right for us to reconsider how we control our blood glucose levels.

Most of us think of our diabetes drugs, diet, and exercise as the three basic ways we do that. But drugs come first. Maybe they should come last, at least for all of us with type 2 diabetes, who unlike type 1s have a choice.

Since March 10, studies have called into question the side effects of metformin, the glitazones, insulin, and the sulfonylureas.
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Psychosocial

Emotional Diabetes

We think about controlling our diabetes with diet and exercise and usually with medication too. Seldom do we even consider the fourth leg.

But a study published in the latest issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine and a forthcoming one by a Ph.D. student who just wrote me emphasizes the importance of our emotions for controlling our diabetes. Emotional health and diabetes health are a two-way street — a bidirectional relationship. When our emotional level is positive, we can more easily control our diabetes. And when we control our diabetes, we feel better.
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Diabetes Testing

The Normal A1C Level

You want to control your diabetes as much as possible. You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t.

So you regularly check your A1C level. This is the best measurement of our blood glucose control that we have now. It tells us what percentage of our hemoglobin — the protein in our red blood cells that carry oxygen — has glucose sticking to it. The less glucose that remains in our bloodstream rather than going to work in the cells that need it the better we feel now and the better our health will continue to be.

As we are able to control our diabetes better and better, the reasonable goal is to bring our A1C levels down to normal — the A1C level that people who don’t have diabetes have. But before we can even set that goal, we have to know what the target is.
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