Hypoglycemia - also called low blood sugar

Here is a artical on hypoglycemia from a diabetes testing supply company.

Hypoglycemia, also called low blood sugar, occurs when your blood glucose (blood sugar) level drops too low to provide enough energy for your body's activities. In adults or children older than 10 years, hypoglycemia is uncommon except as a side effect of diabetes treatment, but it can result from other medications or diseases, hormone or enzyme deficiencies, or tumors.

Symptoms of hypoglycemia include

• hunger
• nervousness and shakiness
• perspiration
• dizziness or light-headedness
• sleepiness
• confusion
• difficulty speaking
• feeling anxious or weak

Hypoglycemia can also happen while you are sleeping. You might

• cry out or have nightmares
• find that your pajamas or sheets are damp from perspiration
• feel tired, irritable, or confused when you wake up

Diabetes testing supply company

Here is a good artical about Liberty Medical - the mail order diabetes supply company.

PolyMedica's main business is providing diabetes testing supplies -- namely test strips and lancets -- directly to the consumer. A smaller but rapidly growing pharmacy segment markets and sells prescription medications to diabetes patients. This segment is anticipating explosive growth from sales related to Part D of the Medicare Modernization Act, which gives Medicare beneficiaries access to prescription drug benefits.

Sounds great, right? But here's the trouble with PolyMedica. First, it's not exactly making a lot of money, although it would like you to believe that it is. One of its largest expenses is what is known as direct-response advertising (DRA). Accounting provisions allow specific expenses spent for the purposes of long-term customer attraction and retention to be capitalized and expensed over a longer time frame. For example, in the fiscal year ended this March, the company spent $59.5 million on DRA but only recognized an expense of $42.4 million, an amortized amount representing small chunks of DRA expenditures from years prior. The result? Pre-tax profit gets a $17.1 million boost. It's an acceptable, but aggressive, form of accounting.

Diabetes and Alheimer's link

From the NYT's.

Several new studies suggest that diabetes increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, adding to a store of evidence that links the disorders. The studies involve only Type 2 diabetes, the most common kind, which is usually related to obesity.

The connection raises an ominous prospect: that increases in diabetes, a major concern in the United States and worldwide, may worsen the rising toll from Alzheimer’s. The findings also add dementia to the cloud of threats that already hang over people with diabetes, including heart disease, strokes, kidney failure, blindness and amputations.

But some of the studies also hint that measures to prevent or control diabetes may lower the dementia risk, and that certain diabetes drugs should be tested to find whether they can help Alzheimer’s patients, even those without diabetes. Current treatments for Alzheimer’s can provide only a modest improvement in symptoms and cannot stop the progression of the disease.

Diabetes treatment

Diabetes article in NYT about treatment.

A new study finds that transplants of insulin-making cells, which reversed severe diabetes in an initial trial, have not lived up to their early promise.

The patients had severe Type 1 diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes, in which the body lacks insulin and people must inject it several times a day to control blood sugar. They were given islet cells from the pancreas of a dead organ donor.

Cell transplants are being studied primarily in people with Type 1 diabetes, which affects about a million people in the United States. It occurs when a person’s immune system, for unknown reasons, attacks the pancreas cells that make insulin.

Type 2 diabetes is different, and far more common, affecting about 20 million in the United States. Patients produce insulin, but their bodies cannot use it properly. The disease is genetic, but often develops only when someone who has the genes for it also becomes overweight. Type 2 is increasing in many countries as obesity rises. (Type 1 is not linked to obesity.)

Medicare monthly premiums rise in 2007

The standard Medicare Part B monthly premium will be $93.50 in 2007, an increase of $5 or 5.6% from the current $88.50, CMS reported last week.

The increase is less than the projected 6% increase in per capita national health spending for 2007 and the projected 7% increase for 2007 retail prescription drug spending. In addition, more than one-fourth of beneficiaries can receive assistance that pays for their entire Part B premium, CMS stated.

Premiums and Deductibles for 2007:

Part A Premium: $410 (paid by about 1 percent of beneficiaries)

Part A deductible: $992

Part B standard premium: $93.50

Part B deductible: $131

From hmenews.com

Diabetes Information

Here is a information article about diabetes statistics and links to some good infomation about diabetes testing and supplies.

Type 2 Diabetes link with sleep

Poor Sleep, Poor Blood Sugar Control May Go Together, Study Shows

If you've got type 2 diabetes, poor sleep may mean worse blood sugar control, a study shows.

Hemoglobin A1c levels were worse in participants who said they got too little sleep and other participants who reported poor-quality sleep.

Diabetes in India

Another lengthy and informative article from the New York Times about diabetes. This time they focus on India instead of New York City.

The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure. In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics.

“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, in Chennai (formerly Madras).

For decades, Type 2 diabetes has been the “rich man’s burden,” a problem for industrialized countries to solve.

But as the sugar disease, as it is often called, has penetrated the United States and other developed nations, it has also trespassed deep into the far more populous developing world.

Medicare cuts to doctors

Congress is once again messing things up with Medicare and seniors.

The Bush administration and Republican-led Congress are headed for a political confrontation with an influential constituency: the 700,000 doctors who treat seniors in the Medicare program and are frantically trying to stave off a planned cut in their fees.

The American Medical Assn. said Thursday that doctors may stop taking seniors as new patients — or even drop out of the program — if the cuts go through. It has launched a nationwide blitz to persuade Congress to rescind a 5.1% cut planned for next year, insisting that lawmakers act before they adjourn in October to campaign for reelection.

How to reduce your diabetes risk

Here is an article about preventitive methods to reduce diabetes risk.

Individuals at risk for developing type 2 diabetes who are prescribed the drug metformin should stick with it, doctors say. In a large study, individuals who adhered to a metformin-based diabetes preventive strategy had a reduced risk of developing diabetes, they report.

The Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) investigated the value of intensive lifestyle intervention (diet and exercise) or metformin in delaying or preventing type 2 diabetes in high-risk individuals with impaired glucose tolerance, a precursor to full-blown diabetes.

Medicare to adjust premium to income

Medicare will soon base its monthly premium on your income level.

The basic Medicare premium will rise next year to $93.50 a month, an increase of $5 a month, the Bush administration announced Tuesday, but for the first time, higher-income beneficiaries will be required to pay a surcharge.

The standard premium is lower than expected. In May and again in July, Medicare officials estimated that it would be about $98 a month in 2007.

The premium in question is for Part B of Medicare, a voluntary program that covers doctors’ services, diagnostic tests and outpatient hospital care for 40 million people who are 65 and older or disabled. It shot up 50 percent from 2003 to 2006, when it reached $88.50 a month.

Medical experts warn of obesity and diabetes pandemic

An obesity pandemic threatens to overwhelm health systems around the globe with illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, experts at an international conference warned Sunday.

The World Health Organization says more than 1 billion adults are overweight and 300 million of them are obese, putting them at much higher risk of diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke and some forms of cancer.

Hispanics Run A Greater Risk of Diabetes

Hispanics run greater risk of diabetes because of diet.

About 20.8 million Americans have diabetes, which was the sixth leading cause of death in 2002, according to the American Diabetes Association. Mirroring a national trend, about 7.4 percent of Orange County residents have the disease.

Diabetes disproportionately affects Hispanics and blacks. Mexican-Americans, for example, are 1.7 times more likely to get diabetes than non-Hispanic whites, according to the diabetes association.

How To Eat To Prevent Or Treat Diabetes - ADA

Good article from the ADA about Diabetes prevention and treatment.

Whether you're trying to prevent diabetes, better manage your disease or slow complications from developing, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has developed specific guidelines to help you choose the right meal plan to get you to your goals.

For people who are at risk for diabetes, the guidelines call for a diet high in fiber and nutrient-rich foods (14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories), with whole grains making up half of all grain intake. In emphasizing the importance of weight loss, they note that medications may be useful for some individuals if combined with lifestyle changes, and that for the very obese, weight loss surgery has shown considerable health benefits. They also caution people who use meal replacements to lose weight that research finds the weight loss is only maintained as long as people stay on the meal replacement plan. Exercise is recommended independent of weight loss because studies show it helps lower blood glucose levels, increases insulin sensitivity, and improves cardiovascular risk factors regardless of whether the person loses any weight.