High-energy breakfast with low-energy dinner helps control blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes — ScienceDaily

A small new study published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that, in people with type 2 diabetes, those who consume a high energy breakfast and a low energy dinner have better blood sugar control than those who eat a low energy breakfast and a high energy dinner. Thus adjusting diet in this fashion could help optimise metabolic control and prevent complications of type 2 diabetes.

She concludes: “High energy intake at breakfast is associated with significant reduction in overall post-meal glucose levels in diabetic patients over the entire day. This dietary adjustment may have a therapeutic advantage for the achievement of optimal metabolic control and may have the potential for being preventive for cardiovascular and other complications of type 2 diabetes.”

via High-energy breakfast with low-energy dinner helps control blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes — ScienceDaily.

Obese preschoolers already show signs of health problems | Fox News

Some overweight and obese preschoolers may already have risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, a new study from Italy suggests.

The study involved more than 5,700 healthy children ages 2 to 6 who visited pediatricians in Rome between 2011 and 2012. Of these children, about 600 (about 10 percent) had become overweight or obese within the last year, and the researchers ran detailed blood tests about 200 of these children for the study.

They found that nearly 40 percent of these children had at least one abnormal reading in their metabolism such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, elevated blood sugar or low levels of “good” cholesterol which, in studies of adults, have been linked with an increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. About one-third of the children had nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or a buildup of fat deposits in the liver.via Obese preschoolers already show signs of health problems | Fox News.

I did a research paper on this topic this past year. I know as a kid and teen I ate some terrible, fat drenched stuff. I was shocked to learn that artery buildup that leads to early death and disease in adulthood starts even as young as preschoolers.

Great reminder that although kids have fast metabolisms, they still shouldn’t eat (too much) junk.

New ‘breathalyzer’ technology may allow diabetics to skip finger pricks | Fox News

New ‘breathalyzer’ technology may allow diabetics to skip finger pricks

By Amanda WoernerPublished November 13, 2013FoxNews.com

A new handheld ‘breathalyzer’ device developed by researchers at Western New England University may someday allow diabetics to monitor their blood-glucose levels in a less painful way.

Diabetes affects an estimated 26 million people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease  Control and Prevention. Currently, the best way for diabetics to monitor their disease is with a blood-glucose test, which requires patients to prick their finger with a needle, often several times a day. While minimally invasive, the procedure can still be a nuisance to diabetics.

“You hear that one of the common complaints among the diabetic community is the needle prick, even though it’s minimally invasive, it’s still an invasive technology,” Ronny Priefer, a professor of medicinal chemistry at Western New England University told FoxNews.com. “And even knowing you’re only going to feel a little prick, if it\’s six to seven times a day it’s going to decrease compliance and a lot of complications come from a lack of compliance with this well-established technology, the blood glucose test.”

As a result, Priefer and his colleagues began looking into less-invasive ways for people to monitor their blood-glucose levels. Knowing that there was a linear relationship between blood-glucose and levels of acetone in a person’s breathe, they developed  a ‘breathalyzer’ tool, using films consisting of two polymers that react with acetone.

Though similar technologies are being developed, Priefer’s version of the tool is cheaper and more effective – particularly because it can compensate for humidity in a persons’ breath, which many other tools are unable to do.

“It actually uses the humidity…whereas other ones, even the smallest amount of humidity messes it up,” Priefer said.

Next, Priefer hopes to begin testing his ‘breathalyzer’ in the diabetic community.

“We’ll be able to make something that is handheld and patients can bring them home for an eight-month period starting late 2014 or early 2015,” Priefer said.

In order to make sure that the breathalyzer provides accurate readings, patients will utilize both the finger prick test and the breathalyzer test in initial trials. They will also keep a food journal, so that researchers can assess whether certain foods, or behaviors, affect the device’s readings.

“Eating an apple 10 minutes before could affect their reading, using it in a nail salon, smoking a cigarette beforehand,” Priefer said.

Overall, Priefer said he hopes that the technology will eventually be able to replace the finger-prick test, and help make it easier for diabetics to monitor their condition.

“Basically, we’d be replacing an invasive tech with a 100 percent non-invasive technology,” Priefer said.

via New ‘breathalyzer’ technology may allow diabetics to skip finger pricks | Fox News.

Diabetes Tied to Timing of Baby’s First Solid Food

Diabetes Tied to Timing of Baby’s First Solid Food

Published: Jul 8, 2013

By Todd Neale, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today

In children with an increased genetic risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus, both early and late first exposure to any solid food predicted development of the disease.

The data suggest the safest age to introduce solid foods in children at increased genetic risk for type 1 diabetes is between 4 and 5 months of age.

Among children already at higher risk for type 1 diabetes, missing the sweet spot for introduction of solid foods may increase the risk even further, researchers found.

Compared with exposing children to solid food for the first time at ages 4 or 5 months, introducing solid food both earlier and later was associated with greater risks of developing the disease (hazard ratio 1.91 for early and HR 3.02 for later), according to Jill Norris, PhD, MPH, of the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora, and colleagues.

The specific food category associated with the greatest risk was rice or oats when first exposure occurred at age 6 months or later (HR 2.88, 95% CI 1.36-6.11), the researchers reported online in JAMA Pediatrics.

“These results suggest the safest age to introduce solid foods in children at increased genetic risk for type 1 diabetes is between 4 and 5 months of age,” they wrote, noting that the findings are consistent with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation to start giving solid foods at 4 to 6 months of age, but should be confirmed in a larger study.

Previous studies looking at the association between the timing of the introduction of solid foods and risk of type 1 diabetes have yielded conflicting results, and Norris and colleagues further explored the issue using data from the Diabetes Autoimmunity Study in the Young (DAISY), a longitudinal investigation of risk factors for the disease.

The current analysis included 1,835 children who either underwent screening for diabetes-susceptibility alleles or had a first-degree relative with type 1 diabetes. Only those followed from birth with complete information about solid food exposure were included.

During the study, 53 of the children were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Introducing solid foods in general too soon or too late was associated with a greater risk of developing type 1 diabetes after adjustment for human leukocyte antigen genotype, having a first-degree relative with the disease, maternal education, and type of delivery.

Early exposure to fruit — excluding fruit juice — was associated with a greater risk (HR 2.23, 95% CI 1.14-4.39), although the relationship became nonsignificant after accounting for other food exposures.

“The risk predicted by early exposure to solid foods might suggest a mechanism involving an abnormal immune response to solid food antigens in an immature gut immune system in susceptible individuals,” the authors wrote. “As the increased risk is not limited to a specific food, it is possible many solids, including cereals and fruits, contain a common component that triggers an immature response.”

On the other hand, the relationship between late exposure to solid foods and risk of type 1 diabetes “may be related to the larger amounts given at initial exposure to older children. Also, if solid foods are introduced too late, when breast milk alone no longer meets the infant’s energy and nutrient needs, nutrient deficiencies may occur, which may play a role in increasing … risk,” according to the researchers.

“Additionally, the increased risk predicted by late exposure to solid foods may be related to the cessation of breastfeeding before solid foods are introduced, resulting in a loss of the protective effects of breast milk at the introduction of foreign food antigens,” they wrote.

Although breastfeeding duration was not related to diabetes risk in the current study, breastfeeding at the time of the first exposure to wheat or barley was associated with a lower risk of developing the disease (HR 0.47, 95% CI 0.26-0.86), “suggesting that breast milk may protect against an abnormal immune response to new antigens in an immature gut,” according to Norris and colleagues.

The timing of exposure to meats, vegetables, and cow’s milk was not associated with the risk of type 1 diabetes.

via Diabetes Tied to Timing of Baby’s First Solid Food.

Vaccine May Stop Immune Attack in Type 1 Diabetes, Study Suggests – WebMD

Vaccine May Stop Immune Attack in Type 1 Diabetes

By Serena Gordon

WEDNESDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) — A new type of vaccine may stop the autoimmune attack that occurs in people with type 1 diabetes, researchers report.

Although an initial trial of the vaccine wasn’t able to free anyone from their daily insulin injections, it did boost insulin production, which could help prevent some of type 1 diabetes’ most devastating complications.

Instead of increasing the immune system’s activity like the polio or influenza vaccine does, the new vaccine turns off a portion of the immune response, acting as a reverse vaccine. The researchers were able to isolate a part of the immune response that only seems to be involved with type 1 diabetes, according to the study. That means the vaccine likely wouldn’t have the risks that medications that suppress the immune system do.

“We were able to destroy the rogue cells that are attacking the insulin-producing cells without destroying any other part of the immune system, and that’s truly exciting,” said senior study author Dr. Lawrence Steinman, a professor of pediatrics and neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.

“Once the immune attack is stopped, I believe there’s great potential for recovery in the beta cells,” Steinman added.

Beta cells in the pancreas produce the hormone insulin. In people with type 1 diabetes, it’s believed that the immune system mistakenly destroys the healthy beta cells, leaving the person with no or too little insulin.

Insulin is a crucial hormone because it’s involved in the metabolism of the carbohydrates. It allows the glucose (sugar) from those carbohydrates to fuel the cells in the body and brain. Without enough insulin, a person will die. That’s why people with type 1 diabetes must take multiple daily injections of insulin, or deliver insulin through a catheter inserted under the skin that’s attached to an insulin pump.

The vaccine was designed by changing a piece of immune-system DNA so that it would shut down the immune system’s response to signals in the body that have previously triggered the mistaken destruction of beta cells. These signals come from fragments of a protein (peptides) called proinsulin, which is found on the surface of beta cells. Proinsulin is a precursor to insulin.

“We just wanted to throw the off switch for the one cell being attacked,” Steinman explained.

The researchers recruited 80 volunteers diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during the past five years. They were randomly placed in one of five groups. Four groups received various doses of the vaccine, and the fifth group received placebo injections. Shots were given weekly for 12 weeks.

No one in the study was able to stop using insulin. “That’s a possible goal, but it’s too early to start saying cure,” Steinman noted.

via Vaccine May Stop Immune Attack in Type 1 Diabetes, Study Suggests – WebMD.

Diabetes-related deaths hit all-time high in New York: Study

Diabetes-related deaths hit all-time high in New York: Study

Photo credit: A couple drink soda beverages. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/GettyImages)

With a judge set to hear the city’s appeal on the soda ban ruling, officials Monday released new figures showing an alarming increase in diabetes-related deaths.

The proportion of diabetes-related deaths out of the total number of deaths citywide increased nearly 5% between 1990 and 2011, according to data released by the city’s health department.

Health officials and experts say the increase, which is greater in some higher poverty neighborhoods, could be turned around.

“It is linked to our epidemic of obesity, and like obesity, it can be prevented,” Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said in a statement.

In 2011, there were 5,695 deaths related to diabetes, an all-time high, compared to 4,436 in 1990, according to the data. Overall, the disease leads to one death every 90 minutes in the city, the Health Department said.

By comparison, overall deaths in the city dropped 28.5% during the same period from 73,855 to 52,789.

The city released the numbers one day before it was set to appeal the lawsuit that blocked its controversial ban on large sugary sodas.

Maria Moriarty, a Queens nutritionist and dietitian, said she wasn’t surprised by the report because many New Yorkers are simply not educated when it comes to a healthy diet.

She added that economics plays a huge factor when it comes to battling diabetes saying many sufferers “don’t have access to doctors or facilities that can cut down on the factors for a healthy lifestyle.”

The Health Department’s study showed a major discrepancy among New York neighborhoods. The majority of the top 10 neighborhoods with the highest rates of diabetes-related deaths in 2011 were in Brooklyn and the Bronx, with the highest being in Brownsville where 177 per 100,000 people perished from the disease.

Viola Greene-Walker, the district manager Community Board 16 in Brownsville, said the numbers troubled her but said the city has been working to find ways to get her residents healthier.

Aside from new health department advertisements and programs that promoted staying away from fatty foods, Greene-Walker said her community has needs to band to together to come up with solutions.

“We encourage folks to growing their own vegetables in the local gardens, it’s become more popular,” she said.

City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin — one of the elected officials for Murray Hill, the neighborhood with the lowest diabetes death rate with 19 deaths per 100,000 people — added that the city should continue to push for similar programs especially among the youth.

Lappin noted a pilot program at a Manhattan middle school called “Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools” that teaches kids the benefits of growing and eating fruits and vegetables is doing well and could easily be instituted in classrooms across the city.

“The goal is to teach these kids how to live healthier and that idea grows as they become adults,” the councilwoman said.

via Diabetes-related deaths hit all-time high in New York: Study.

Drinking soda daily increases diabetes risk – chicagotribune.com

Sugary drinks can raise diabetes risk by 22 percent: study

Soft drink cups sized at 32 ounces and 64 ounces (Andrew Burton, Reuters / May 31, 2012)

LONDON (Reuters) – Drinking just one can of sugar-laced soda drink a day increases the risk of developing diabetes by more than a fifth, according to a large European study published on Wednesday.

Using data from 350,000 people in eight European countries, researchers found that every extra 12 fluid ounce (340 ml) serving of sugar-sweetened drink raises the risk of diabetes by 22 percent compared with drinking just one can a month or less.

“Given the increase in sweet beverage consumption in Europe, clear messages on the unhealthy effect of these drinks should be given to the population,” said Dora Romaguera, who led with study with a team at Imperial College London.

A 12-fluid-ounce serving is about equivalent to a normal-sized can of Coca-Cola, Pepsi or other soft drink.

The findings echo similar conclusions from research in the United States, where several studies have shown that intake of sugar-sweetened drinks is strongly linked with higher body weight and conditions like type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is a long-term condition characterized by insulin resistance that affects around 2.9 million people in Britain and, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 310 million people worldwide.

Romaguera’s team wanted to establish whether a link between sugary drinks and diabetes risk also existed in Europe.

For their study, they used data from 350,000 people from Britain, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, France, Italy, Netherlands who were questioned about their diet, including how many sugary and artificially sweetened soft drinks and juices they drank each day.

Writing in the journal Diabetologia, the researchers said their study “corroborates the association between increased incidence of Type-2 diabetes and high consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks in European adults”.

Fruit juice consumption was not linked to diabetes incidence.

Patrick Wolfe, a statistics expert from University College London who was not involved in the research, said the message from its results was clear.

“The bottom line is that sugary soft drinks are not good for you – they have no nutritional value and there is evidence that drinking them every day can increase your relative risk for type 2 diabetes,” he said in an emailed comment.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

via Drinking soda daily increases diabetes risk – chicagotribune.com.

Sugar’s Role In Rise Of Diabetes Gets Clearer : The Salt : NPR

by ELIZA BARCLAY

A performer drinks a soda in Ahmedabad, India in 2010. A study found that rising diabetes prevalence in countries like India is strongly tied to sugar consumption.

Robert Lustig wants to convince the world that sugar is making us very sick. And lately he’s turned to an unconventional field – econometrics – to do it.

Lustig rounded up statisticians and epidemiologists to look at the relationship between food and diabetes risk. The paper, published this week in the journal PLoS One, found that the more sugar on the market in 175 countries, the higher the country’s diabetes rate.

“I’m not suggesting sugar is the only cause of diabetes,” Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Franciso, tells The Salt. “But in this analysis it was the only thing that predicted it. And it was worldwide and over a decade.”

The researchers found that for every additional 150 calories of sugar (the amount that’s in a 12-ounce can of soda) available per person per day, the prevalence of diabetes in the population rose 1 percent. They compared that against an additional 150 calories from any type of food, which caused only a 0.1 percent increase in the population’s diabetes rate over the past decade.

The findings controlled for obesity, physical activity, and a number of economic and social variables.

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman called the new study “the closest thing to causation and a smoking gun that we will see” for the relationship between sugar and diabetes.

But not everyone agrees this paper is the “smoking gun” for sugar.

Frank Hu, an expert on diabetes epidemiology at Harvard, tells The Salt that while the study’s findings track with other research linking sugar intake to the diabetes epidemic, Lustig’s study by itself is “weak evidence of a causal link.”

Why? Because, he says, epidemiologists don’t consider ecological studies like this one, which take a statistical snapshot, as reliable as prospective cohort studies, which follow a group of people over time.

Hu notes that he was also surprised to see that other foods did not predict diabetes risk nearly as strongly as sugar in Lustig’s study. “I don’t know why this happened, because we know other foods are associated with diabetes risk – like highly refined grain products, white rice, bread, and other starchy foods. Those foods are not very different from sugar. But maybe sugar is a better indicator of certain dietary habits of a population.”

Lustig himself is the first one to admit that proving that any one thing causes a disease, especially a chronic disease, is tricky business. And Lustig’s co-author Sanjay Basu wrote on an epidemiology blog this week that “we can’t ‘prove causality’ through any amount of statistics.”

But Lustig insists that nailing down sugar’s role in the rise of obesity and diabetes is useful, because it will give people a starting point.

“The point is, if [diabetes is caused by] many things, you can handle each one, one at a time,” says Lustig.

Where to start, then? Well, Lustig says, we could start by regulating sugar better, with stricter guidelines for sugar consumption, and taxes on it.

Sounds like he’ll soon be pushing for legislation — especially since the doctor is pursuing a law degree.

He’s certainly no lightweight when it comes to getting out the message. His YouTube video “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” has attracted millions of viewers since it went viral in 2010.

via Sugar’s Role In Rise Of Diabetes Gets Clearer : The Salt : NPR.

Why we all Need a Pre-Diabetes Diet

By Amy O’Connor

There’s no getting around the fact that we are a prediabetic society with an obesity epidemic. While we do hate to bring these facts up in November, a month when most families give thanks over a rich meal and look forward to a lazy, indulgent holiday season. But this also happens be National Diabetes Month. And choosing the right food is crucially important to people with diabetes. About 24 million Americans are believed to have diabetes, and nearly 6 million don’t know it. Another 57 million are thought to have prediabetes, a condition that boosts risks for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. If current trends continue, 1 in 3 U.S. adults will develop diabetes by 2050.

If you don’t want to become a statistic, experts say you should start making small changes to your diet and lifestyle as soon as you can. High blood sugar silently damages the body, even if you don’t feel it. Having a normal, healthy weight by itself can reduced the risk of developing diabetes by 60 to 70 percent, and eating a healthier diet can slash your risk by 15 percent, says Jarad Reis, a researcher from the U.S. Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Here are some easy changes to make now:

End portion distortion

When you have type 2 diabetes, you need to gauge portion sizes correctly, so you know how many calories and carbohydrates you’re taking in and how they will affect your blood sugar. A 2004 study of 329 overweight people found that 38% of those who practiced portion control for two years lost 5% or more of body weight, compared with 33% of participants who did not (they gained 5% or more of body weight).

Health.com: 5 Healthy Snacks for People With (or Without!) Diabetes

Eat more fiber

Fiber itself doesn’t raise blood sugar because it can’t be digested, and that’s good. But even better, it can blunt the impact that carbohydrates have on blood sugar. The reason? The intestines take a bit more time to digest fiber-rich foods, and that slows the release of glucose into your bloodstream. A 2000 study of 13 patients showed that patients with diabetes who consumed 50 grams of fiber each day lowered their glucose levels 10% and insulin levels 12% more than those who consumed 24 grams of fiber a day. The problem is that 50 grams of fiber per day is a lot of fiber. Most Americans consume only 15 grams every day, according to the American Heart Association, and the American Diabetes Association recommends that people with diabetes eat 25 to 50 grams daily.

Space your meals

Choosing the right kind of carbohydrates and spacing them out evenly throughout the day can keep blood sugar from rising too high, too fast (90% of the carbohydrate calories you digest end up as glucose, so they have a much bigger impact on blood sugar than fat or protein). “The goal … is to take in enough carbohydrates to nourish ourselves, but never so much that it causes high blood sugars,” says Linda Sartor, a diabetes nutrition specialist at the Penn Rodebaugh Diabetes Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Get some C

A European study found that people with the most vitamin C in their bodies had the lowest incidence of diabetes, although the link isn’t clear. Fruits and veggies like oranges, strawberries, and broccoli are the best sources of C.

Spice it up

Researchers from the University of Georgia tested 24 common herbs and spices and discovered that their antioxidants could prevent inflammation associated with diabetes. Cloves and cinnamon both got high rankings.

via Pre-Diabetes Diet Tips.