Dave Sherohman

Just missing the one-year anniversary of my initial Hypoinsulinism and Insulin Resistance Syndicate content post, which argues that we need to stop talking about "diabetes" and instead focus more on the causes of each individual's tendency towards elevated blood sugar, I've run across the posting SKEWED STATISTICS: The Inclusion of People with Type 1 Diabetes in the Statistics for Type 2 Diabetes which summarizes a few sources to paint a picture of type 2 diabetes behaving much more predictably than is commonly believed. According to this article's premise, much of the complexity attributed to the causes and progression of type 2 is actually due to the failure of researchers to properly distinguish slow-onset autoimmune (i.e., type 1) diabetes from type 2 diabetes in adults.

Results are in on initial one-day overnight trials of an artificial pancreas and they sound promising:

Although details so far are sparse, a recent study from the University of Oklahoma appears to indicate that vitamin C may help to prevent vascular damage in people with type 1 diabetes. A followup study will be done to see whether similar benefits are found for type 2.

Yet another group of mice have been cured of type 1 diabetes, this time using a combination of the drugs LSF (Lisofylline), a targeted immunosuppressant, and INGAP (Islet Neogenesis Associated Protein peptide), which promotes regrowth of pancreatic islet cells. I had heard rumors that research was being done with this kind of drug combination, but this is the first time I've found details on such a study.

In this trial, 70% of mice were shown to be cured of type 1 diabetes by this combination of drugs. By "cured", I mean that blood sugar levels remained normal even after all diabetes treatment was stopped, although I'm sure that, if this works in humans, our longer lifespan would leave us susceptible to re-onset of diabetes if we were to encounter another environmental trigger which restarted the anti-beta-cell autoimmune response.

Just what is diabetes, what causes it, and why is it an issue?

The mass media love to play up the sensationalized "diabetes epidemic", ignoring that there is more than one form of diabetes, only one of which is soaring, and often failing to mention that issues relevant to one form may not apply to others.

The medical community, on the other hand, recognizes three major (and several minor) variations on diabetes based on how exactly it came about, yet research and recommendations are all too often done on the basis of "diabetes" as if it were a unified whole without regard for those variations.

Maintaining control of type 1 diabetes is a constant balancing act between food, insulin, exercise, stress, and the random whims of the Diabetes Fairy. The most important tool for keeping those things in balance is understanding of how those different factors affect blood sugar, both in the general case and for you personally.