At first I couldn’t decide whether B was for Byetta or for better. Then I realized that it didn’t matter.

Byetta is better. It is better at helping people with type 2 diabetes to lose weight than anything else. And the longer I use it the better it helps me at controlling my appetite and increasing my exercise. Byetta is pretty darn good too at bringing down our A1C. [Read more →]

Back in the dawn of the Internet era, JAMA, the top American medical journal warned, “Let the reader and viewer beware” of the quality of medical information on the Internet. This month the American Medical Association reiterated the warning – on the web itself – “regarding the incomplete, misleading, or inaccurate medical information available on the web.” [Read more →]

I’m almost ready to retract.Sometimes I write or speak too soon. I know that none of you do that, but sometimes my fingers and my tongue work faster than my mind. [Read more →]

Just as I was regretting having read all of Michael Pollan’s books, here he comes with a wonderful long article in The New York Times Magazine.

The article is “Unhappy Meals.” But the key point is about nutritionism. [Read more →]

We can’t control our diabetes without knowing what to do. That means searching out information ourselves. Diabetes is so complex that, unlike people with other conditions, we can’t rely on our doctors.

As a writer about diabetes I search out information wherever I can find it. That means interviewing doctors and other experts, reading the latest books, and keeping up with the diabetes magazines.

But what I learn from those sources pales in comparison to the information about diabetes available on the Web. Knowing how to search the Web is so important that Gretchen Becker includes a whole chapter, “Searching the Internet,” in her book The First Year: Type 2 Diabetes. Marlowe & Company, the biggest independent publisher of books about diabetes, will publish the second edition of her book on December 28.
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If you work for someone else – or even think that you might some day – you might not want to let people outside your family know that you have diabetes. [Read more →]

You can find information about the medicines you take all over the Internet. Hype and scams surround us. So, what information can you trust? [Read more →]

People with diabetes probably look as hard for free drugs as party crashers look for a free lunch. Both are sometimes there for the taking, but you have to know where to look.

The surprising fact about free drugs is that the best place for most people to look for them is in your doctor’s office. In my experience doctors often have more free samples than places to store them. [Read more →]

In my spare time this week I read a couple of books. Both books are about diabetes. Both are new and both are very well written. But that is where the similarities end. [Read more →]

People like me who deal with diabetes every day on the Internet know that the hucksters are targeting us more and more with their scams and schemes. For people in business, diabetes has a well-deserve reputation as a growth industry. [Read more →]