THURSDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDay News) — While rates of obesity are climbing across America, they are especially high in sections of Appalachia and the Southeast, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports in its first county-by-county survey.
Obesity and diabetes “are basically the two conditions of greatest concern for U.S. adults right now,” said study lead author Edward Gregg, chief of epidemiology and statistics in the CDC’s division of diabetes translation. Read More
MONDAY, Nov. 2 (HealthDay News) — Though someone is diagnosed with diabetes every 20 seconds, many Americans lack basic knowledge about the potentially life-threatening disease, according to a new survey from the American Diabetes Association.
Diabetes is responsible for more deaths each year in the United States than breast cancer and AIDS combined, but just 42 percent of those surveyed knew that diabetes could be so deadly. Read More
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28 (HealthDay News) — Diet and exercise can keep diabetes at bay for a decade, cutting the risk for the disease by more than a third in the most susceptible people, a new study finds.
About 11 percent of U.S. adults (24 million) have diabetes, mostly type 2, which is linked to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. In addition, 57 million overweight adults have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, which raise the risk of a heart attack or stroke and the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes, researchers say. Read More
MONDAY, Oct. 26 (HealthDay News) — A French study finding that people with Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes have less memory loss than those without diabetes should be regarded with caution, American experts say.
“It’s not clear from this study and others what the relationship is,” said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.
What is clear, Thies said, is that having diabetes increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease — a relationship acknowledged in the first sentence of a report on the French study in the Oct. 27 issue of Neurology. Read More
THURSDAY, Oct. 22 (HealthDay News) — New research provides further insight into how a health-boosting compound found in red grapes may help the body fend off type 2 diabetes.
But scientists have only seen the effect in mice who received injections in the brain, and no evidence has emerged that consuming red wine or other products made with grapes will alleviate the blood sugar disease.
The findings do tell scientists about how the compound known as resveratrol works on the brain, said senior study author Roberto Coppari. Read More
THURSDAY, Oct. 22 (HealthDay News) — Adding insulin to standard diabetes drugs results in better blood sugar control for many with type 2 diabetes, British researchers report, and the dose and timing of insulin received can make a big difference.
Specifically, a once-a-day, long-acting dose of insulin may be the best approach for patients making the move to insulin therapy, the study found. Read More
MONDAY, Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) — People who live in neighborhoods that promote physical activity and offer access to healthy foods may be less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, researchers say.
Their study included 2,285 people, aged 45 to 84, living in neighborhoods in Baltimore, Forsyth County, N.C., and New York City/Bronx. Their neighborhoods were assessed by asking residents questions, such as whether it’s easy or pleasant to walk in their community, and whether local stores carry a large, high-quality selection of fruits, vegetables and other low-fat foods. Average neighborhood scores were 3.68 for physical activity and 3.36 for healthy foods, the researchers found. Read More
FRIDAY, Oct. 9 (HealthDay News) — A strong link exists between the body’s biological clock and blood sugar control, say U.S. researchers who conducted lab experiments on mouse and human stem cells, as well as genetically engineered mice.
“The most surprising part of our findings is that our internal biologic rhythms are embedded directly into another pathway, one that is essential to regulate metabolism,” senior author Dr. Brian Feldman, an assistant professor of pediatric endocrinology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a university news release. Read More
MONDAY, Sept. 28 (HealthDay News) — Patients who take the diabetes drugs known as thiazolidinediones may be at higher risk of bone fracture, new research suggests.
In the study, Dr. Ian Douglas of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and colleagues searched a database of more than 6 million patients in the United Kingdom and found 1,819 people aged 40 and older who had had a bone fracture and had been prescribed a type of thiazolidinedione. The drugs were introduced in the 1990s and are used to treat type 2 diabetes. Read More
MONDAY, Sept. 28 (HealthDay News) — Women with type 2 diabetes have a 26 percent increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation, a potentially life-threatening irregular heartbeat, new findings suggest.
The overall incidence of atrial fibrillation was 3.6 percent among people with type 2 diabetes, while the rate for people without the metabolic condition was only 2.5 percent, according to the study, which will be published in the October issue of Diabetes Care. Read More
