Various and Sundry: Now Everything But Photography

Here’s a great video from a guy who has both an insulin pump AND a continuous glucose monitor. Here he goest through his routine of changing out his pump and monitor sets.

I admit that there’s a moment about 9 minutes into this video that got me a little emotional. This being a father thing softens you up…

You can read his full story here, and I definitely recognize parallels to my own situation, though I was only 11 when mine was diagnosed.

I found all this while following a story about hackers killing diabetics from a half mile away that is more than half-hogwash. Don’t worry, it’s not true. And since I don’t use a pump, I wouldn’t be affected, anyway.

On the perhaps brighter side, we return to the research of Dr. Faustmann, who years ago I once sent the biggest charitable check in my life to. (Lee Iacocca was a big contributor to her work at the time. That link is from 2006.)

She’s seeing results now for curing diabetes through a TB vaccine:

The first trial in a handful of humans has suggested that injecting patients with Type 1 diabetes with an inexpensive vaccine normally used to prevent tuberculosis can block destruction of insulin-secreting pancreatic cells in humans and allow regeneration of the pancreas. Such a finding, if confirmed and expanded on, could lay the foundation for freeing the estimated 1 million U.S. Type 1 diabetics from their daily insulin shots. It brings up a word that is rarely or never used in considering the disease: “cure.” Such an outcome is still a long way in the future, but Dr. Denise Faustman of Massachusetts General Hospital has already come a long way in her quest to find a new treatment paradigm for diabetes.

So she’s actually showing progress, at least, moving in a direction that most people gave up on too long ago, in the hopes of making it easier to take shots and prick our fingers endlessly. Thanks, Dr. F!

Every month or two, this blog likes to highlight the latest cure-all for diabetes. Often, it involves only Type II diabetics, and usually nothing comes of it in the long run.

So goes another cure. This time, it’s extreme dieting:

Eleven people with diabetes took part in the study, which was funded by Diabetes UK. They had to slash their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. But three months later seven of the 11 were free of diabetes.

Still nothing’s been done for those of us who got screwed genetically, not just from eating too much damned McDonalds…

Let’s flash back now to this very blog, January 20, 2006:

Pfizer Inc. hopes to begin selling Exubera, the first inhalable version of insulin to win federal approval, by midyear.

To which I wrote:

I’ll believe it when I see it, and not even then. I’ll believe it when there isn’t a class action suit a year later.

and

The promise of inhalable insulin has been around for as long as I’ve been diabetic — almost 19 years now. It’s right up there with the watch that will keep constant track of your blood sugar without taking blood. (That’s sorta out now, too, but with its own cavaets.)

In case you’re wondering what happened to this wonder drug, let’s consult Wikipedia:

As of October 18, 2007, Pfizer has announced that it will no longer manufacture or market Exubera. According to Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Kindler this is because Exubera “failed to gain acceptance among patients and physicians.”

At the time of Exubera’s discontinuation, several other companies were pursuing inhaled insulin… However, by March 2008, all of these products had been discontinued except for MannKind’s Afrezza product. As of March 2010 Afrezza was still under FDA review.

So, like I said, don’t get your hopes up when it comes to diabetes cures or medications.

The story is a couple of weeks old, but I’m pretty sure I blogged the story that this is a sequel to a couple years back.

AppleInsider | “Jesus Phone 3.0″ touches diabetic blogger

During Apple’s iPhone 3.0 event, the presentation of a mobile-attached blood glucose monitor for diabetic users apparently bored some journalists in the room. However, the demonstration not only revealed Apple’s most important leap yet in mobile devices, but also answered the pleas of a diabetic blogger.

I want one of those now!

Common plastics chemical linked to human diseases | Health | Reuters

A study has for the first time linked a common chemical used in everyday products such as plastic drink containers and baby bottles to health problems, specifically heart disease and diabetes.

Now that we have a crackpot explanation for diabetes, I expect a crackpot cure to come along this weekend.  The universe needs balance, after all.

It’s been a while since the last miracle cure for diabetes.  I’m glad I can bring the latest and greatest advance in medical science that will never pan out to your attention:

Scientists Reprogram Adult Cells’ Function

Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires associated with embryonic stem cell research.Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive.

I think I’ll go stock up on Diet Pepsi now. . .

Finally, Disney gives diabetes some attention!

FOXNews.com – Nick Jonas Launches Type 1 Diabetes Awareness Campaign

Pop superstar Nick Jonas is already an inspiration to the millions of teens and ‘tweens’ who hang on every lyric sung by his band the Jonas Brothers.

But Jonas, who suffers from type 1 diabetes, hopes a three-year partnership he’s created with Bayer HealthCare will serve as an inspiration to others living with this disease.

I’ve been diabetic for 21 years now.  I was WAY ahead of the curve on this one!
Diabetes rates skyrocket among Americans, CDC says – CNN.com

The number of Americans with diabetes has grown to about 24 million people, or roughly 8 percent of the U.S. population, the government said Tuesday.
The number of diabetics, who often use insulin pumps, has risen about 3 million over two years, says the CDC.

A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on data from 2007, said the number represents an increase of about 3 million over two years. The CDC estimates another 57 million people have blood sugar abnormalities called pre-diabetes, which puts people at increased risk for the disease.

But the thing is, mine is genetic.  This epidemic mostly stems from people who don’t exercise enough or eat all of the wrong foods.  They’re going to see the bulk of spending done on fixing them, while those of us who are just stuck with it from birth will get nothing.

Life’s so fair, isn’t it?

But Bayer is making good on a bad batch of test strips for their glucometer:

2007 Press Releases

Bayer Diabetes Care has initiated a voluntary market recall of test strips (sensors) used exclusively with the Contour TS Blood Glucose Meter. In the course of its routine quality control monitoring processes the Company identified a manufacturing issue with test strips from specific lots that could result in blood glucose readings with a positive bias that is outside of our product specifications. Test results may demonstrate results 5 -17% higher.

5-17% ain’t bad, but it ain’t good, either, especially at higher numbers. There’s a difference in the amount of insulin I’d take for a 200 blood sugar, as opposed to a 234, for example. But between 80 and 85? Nada.

Glad to see a company actually utilizes their QA testing. . .

DS Game Takes Place of Glucose Monitor | Game | Life from Wired.com

The GlucoBoy, a glucose monitor that lets users play games by plugging it into a GameBoy Advance or DS, could be an important tool for helping children learn to manage their diabetes. [...]

The GlucoBoy helps players manage their diabetes by awarding points whenever they perform a glucose test, with extra points given out if the test results fall within specific goals. Points can be used to unlock new games, or can be spent at GRiP (Guidance Reward Platform), a site that offers accessories, apparel, and cards for Knock ‘em Downs, one of the games featured in the GlucoBoy.

Diabetics will like this answer:

The pancreas is a completely crummy organ, without a stem cell population to help regenerate it after being damaged, that eventually craps out in nearly every human with age. I would give the pancreas a stem cell population that renews the beta cells which are responsible for insulin production, and the whole insulin system could stand to be improved to prevent insulin insensitivity with age.

While the page is completely serious and anatomically correct, there are diagrams in there that you might not want to show your five year old kid. And I agree completely about the lack of need for a prostate.

…that won’t help me one bit. It’s for Type 2, or “adult onset” diabetes.

Aussie scientists make diabetes breakthrough – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Australian researchers have pinpointed a key cause of type 2 diabetes, in a study they say has brought them closer to developing a simpler, more effective treatment for the disease.The team has identified an enzyme in diabetics as the active agent that blocks the production of insulin, which is a hormone that helps the pancreas convert blood-sugar into energy.

To their credit, they’re discussing the ramifications this would have towards treatment, not a cure. I’ve lost count of the number of cures we’ve been promised this year already.

And this was in Canada! They’re nicer up there!

Mountie fined for punching diabetic

An RCMP disciplinary board has fined a Kamloops officer two days’ pay after he punched a diabetic man in the head because he thought, incorrectly, that the man was driving drunk.

In a recent decision, the RCMP board found Constable Burke Huschi used “excessive force” without first investigating the circumstances of the situation.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Low blood sugar is as close to drunk as I’ll ever get.

As if diabetics didn’t have a bad enough reputation. . .

Discovery supports theory of Alzheimer’s disease as form of diabetes

Insulin, it turns out, may be as important for the mind as it is for the body. Research in the last few years has raised the possibility that Alzheimer’s memory loss could be due to a novel third form of diabetes.