Press Release – Lilly and the JDRF Partner to Fund Regenerative Medicine Research in Type 1 Diabetes

Children with Type 1 diabetes are nearly 10 times as likely to also have a viral infection than healthy children, Australian research suggests.

See original here:
Diabetes and virus link confirmed.

An international research study has shown that, in animal models, type 2 insulin (IGF-II) growth factor reinforces memory and prevents forgetfulness.

Read more here:
Type 2 Insulin (IGF-II) Growth Factor Found To Reinforce Memory And Prevent Forgetfulness

I know I haven’t posted in quite a while, I have a had a ton of changes going on with job changes and some other events that kept me pretty busy. Since all of the changes, I decided I was going to add one more thing to that mix. I changed the injection site for my pump from my leg, back to my abdomen.

It was quite a surprise taking a needle in the gut again after not having done so in 6 or 7 months. Especially being I use the “quick-serter” device. This was only the beginning of 4 day mess that was about to send me spinning into a downward spiral! Hours after I changed my pump, my friend came up to my apartment with some Club Flyers and wanted to go out to one of these places for some drinks. He had just been at the NC State football game all day and judging by the smell that was starting to fill my apartment, he had been doing some drinking already. So we picked a place we hadn’t been to in a while and hopped in the car. Before I even walked into the bar I checked my sugar and it was up over 300, I immediately took about 15 units with my pump and then went inside. I had one beer while talking with some other friends that we met there and we paid our tab and left. Total time since last reading was about 1 hour and 30 minutes, as we are heading to the next bar I check it again and its about 280. Lower, but something is wrong, this is not normal! I thought maybe it was air in the lines that I missed or something. I continued to check it about every hour if I could and probably went through close to 50 units just to get it down to a normal level. After 2 more days of similar readings I realized that I was just not absorbing it well and changed it immediately. Things seem to be back to normal now but in the meantime I spoke to my Dr about a continuous glucose monitor. There are times where something similar to this will happen and hours go by with me not knowing because it’s getting high for another reason other than what I am eating or bolusing.

Continuous Glucose Monitor

I have to track my numbers for the next 30 days and then submit them to a representative that will try to work with my insurance company in trying to get approved for it. They really only care about lows and if your 30-day stretch does include a lot of lows, they probably wont approve me. At least this is what the rep said. I have started an excel file for the rep and will keep everyone posted on what the final outcome is.

I think it will be great for when I am out and about for long periods of time and especially when I am changing my site and there is a possibility for air or me hitting a bad spot in my abdomen that isn’t absorbing insulin well.

Finally some good news for Type 2 Diabetics, drug makers Bristol-Myers Squibb and partners Astrazeneca PLC had their latest drug Onglyza approved. Onglyza reduces blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes, which affects 24 million people in the U.S.

Bristol-Myers Squibb

The drug is the first to gain approval since the agency issued new testing guidelines for diabetes treatments last year. Concerns about heightened risks of heart attack with GlaxoSmithKline’s pill Avandia created a storm of controversy around the FDA and the safety standards for popular diabetes treatments.

Many Type 2 diabetics that I have spoke with have a tough time keeping their levels down, while they still produce some insulin in most cases, it’s a guessing game of how much. The amount of insulin they are producing can change day to day and be affected by mood, emotions, weight and many other variables. Many say they avoid eating pasta, rice and other food high in carbohydrates or sugar all together. They just cannot find a way to control their sugar levels afterward so it isn’t worth it.

There is still some concern with those patients that have heart conditions even though there was no sign higher rates of heart attack, stroke and other problems. Despite such evidence, the FDA said it will require the companies to conduct a follow-up study examining those problems in high-risk patients, including the elderly and those with existing heart conditions.

Hopefully Onglyza will help many of the patients out there with type 2 diabetes that are having trouble with high levels. The drug has not been tested on patients using insulin so it will not be prescribed to those type 2 patients that are currently injecting insulin.

Further information on Onglyza can be found Here

As a diabetic you learn to stay away from the “earthquake” foods and drinks. You are probably scratching your head saying “what the hell is an earthquake food?” I will tell you exactly what it is, earthquakes shake up the ground and then have these after effects where weird things happen even hours later. So there are certain foods that do this to me as well. I eat them and the next 3 – 4 hours of my day is spent monitoring my sugar in 30 minute intervals. A few examples are white rice, cake and ice cream, certain pasta dishes… Etc. Everyone can probably think of something that has thrown your day off completely or the day of someone you know.

I tend to avoid most sweets, juices and foods high in sugar or carbohydrates. Every once in a while there will be a wedding, birthday, party… who knows, but you splurge and take a hit. I will go for the cake and ice cream if it stares at me long enough and calls out my name. After all, I would hate to offend whoever brought it anyway, so go ahead cut me a slice asap!

Cake and Sweet Tea

Mid way through my enjoyment, I can feel it, the earthquake is starting, but this is just the beginning. I start debating how much insulin and dial it in to prepare for the ride. Sometimes it’s smooth sailing and I keep my levels near normal but for the most part there is always a surprise where I am left thinking ” how did this happen!” my eye lids become heavy and I start feeling lethargic, my mood changes, my smile from that tasty icing disappears… What a mess!

I am not sure if it’s all worth it in the end but I do a good job of correcting things pretty quickly, I might spike to high 200′s but will fix it quickly. Not the greatest thing for you but maybe do this more often I will become an expert.

Practice makes perfect!

One of the main things that I hate with extreme temperatures is that none of of my glucometers (I have 3) ever work when they have been sitting in extreme heat or extreme cold. You would think someone with a little smarts could design a special case which would prevent the device from getting too hot or too cold. Maybe this is harder than I know but it sounds like a good idea.

Now that it’s summer there are certain events which are often paired with a lot of guessing while I enjoy them. Two that come to mind right now are Softball and Swimming. With Softball I make sure I eat about an hour before the game and check my sugar about 10-20 minutes before. After checking I bolus if needed and leave my pump and glucometer in the car or in my bat bag. No matter where I leave my glucometer, if it’s above 90, say goodbye until further notice.

Me playing 3rd base - Summer 2008

While playing softball and exerting myself I have trouble judging where my levels are. There are times I think I am low because I am shaking but it’s just because I ran my tail off to get home and score. I carry Swedish fish with me for several reasons; they are delicious, they bring my sugar up and they don’t melt or get sticky from heat and one more thing and I not sure if I covered… they are delicious! If I start noticing other signs of a low I will eat some but it’s so hard to judge sometimes. Usually I wait until after the game because I hate correcting blindly and I have had some close calls doing this. I get to my car and pull out my handy glucometer only to get an error because it’s been sitting in the heat!

Another activity where this gets difficult is swimming, whether it’s the beach or the pool, it is nearly impossible to spend the day outside near water and have your meter work. I try to test before I head out but things change quickly depending on what you are doing and especially if you make a day of it and have lunch outdoors as well. You can’t swim with a pump so it has to come off and I usually get into this zone for an hour or two and forget to think about it. By that second or third hour it’s back on my mind, I am wondering “man I wonder what I am at right now.”

I would love to go just one entire day without having to worry about it one time… Someday.

Me - Outer Banks, NC - Summer 2008

If I do have a cooler with me, I will try to stick it in there. If not when I get home from softball or the pool, if the meter still isn’t working I put it in the refrigerator and let that sucker cool down. It’s not like this happens every time and it isn’t an everyday thing, only when it is HOT (with capital letters) outside. I would say 95 and above. Shade or no shade that meter is taking a vacation!

One of the hardest things to get a young child with diabetes to learn is how important it is to check your sugar levels on a regular basis. Some parents don’t even realize how important it is and how it will effect their child’s body over time if their sugar is always high and never monitored correctly. So if the parents aren’t aware, the kids are less likely to be on top of the disease causing complications later on.

Bayer has recently released a product to change all of this for kids and parents. It’s called “The Didget” and it is a glucometer that plugs directly into the child’s Nintendo DS and DS lite systems. “The DIDGET meter is designed to help kids manage this lifelong condition by rewarding them for building consistent blood glucose testing habits and meeting personalized glucose target ranges.” Right now this is only available in the UK but should soon make it’s way to the US.

The Didget should really push children with diabetes and their parents to stay consistent with testing and learning about the importance of monitoring blood sugar.

I am a little annoyed that this wasn’t out when I was younger, maybe this would have been my calling. I am horrible at every video game I play on any system – except for maybe Tiger Woods Golf on PS3. I think I could have been a Didget champ! Then again there are probably a bunch of little nerdy diabetic kids with codes to this game that allow them to get rewarded by hitting some crazy sequence of buttons. Something like back, forward, back, back, A, B. Hopefully I didn’t just give anyone any ideas…

At the end of the day it is ideas like this that may make us obsess over testing our sugar and keeping it in that perfect range. The more obsessed the better, lets just hope you have good insurance because I can see these kids going through a lot of test strips! Doctors will be like “Johnny you were using 5 test strips a day before why are you now using 30 a day?” Johnny will reply with “Well Doc, there is this sweet new game out for the Nintendo DS and I am about 3 levels away from beating it.”

I will be on the look out for when this comes to the U.S. – I can’t wait to see it in action!

For those of you who do not know what dawn phenomenon is, it is simply an increase in blood sugar in the middle of the night or sometimes referred to as the “dawn effect”. Typically between 4:00 AM and 8:00 AM the sugar levels of some diabetics rise abnormally. Some researchers say that it is due to an increase in hormone production such as epinephrine, cortisol, glucagon and other growth hormones. Some of our hormones tell our liver to release glucose to give us the fuel we need when we wake up. But when these hormones are out of balance with the hormone insulin, the liver releases too much glucose.

For me this was a frustrating thing since I was always trying to perfect my levels in my late teens. It would drive me crazy that no matter how well I left things before bed I would wake up ridiculously high in the morning. After explaining this to my doctor she recommended getting on an insulin pump. I nodded my head and acted interested but after leaving thought to myself; “there is no way I am going to have something attached to me like that”. This is back when cell phones were still pretty large and couldn’t fit in your pocket, so as a guy you had to have a belt clip. All I could think about was having this big pump and a big cell phone on my belt at the same time. Then again going some places like an amusement park was difficult because you cant really carry around a bag the entire time, so you use a locker. The lockers are always on the other end of the park from where you decide you are going to stop and eat and that’s where you have your shots. One of my biggest fears was one of my friends joking around and tackling me or hitting the injection site ( guys in their teens do these things without any notice thinking they are a super hero) and ripping it out. That being one of my main fears I had, the older I got the better of an idea it became.

About 3 and a half years ago I decided to get the pump, insurance was paying for it and at this point there was no reason not to get it. It has not only changed my life completely but has allowed me to have near perfect levels in the morning. Basal (the insulin that trickles in slowly throughout the day) rates can be set to different levels throughout the day. In the middle of the night, or morning however you look at it I set a peak in my basal rate. So from 12 AM to 3AM my basal rate is .85 and then at 3 AM it jumps up to 1.50 to compensate for any increase I would experience from dawn phenomenon. This insulin pump has completely changed my morning levels which make it SO much easier to get out of bed every morning.