On Monday, July 12, 2010 I attended the Pre-Diabetes Congressional Briefing on Capitol Hill held in cooperation with Congressional Diabetes Caucus Co-Chairs Rep. Diana DeGette and Rep. Mike Castle and co-sponsored by Results for Life, the American Diabetes Association, Novo Nordisk, and The Endocrine Society. I was astonished to learn that there are 57 million Americans living in danger of developing type II diabetes. For 40 percent of these individuals, full blown type II diabetes is expected to be a reality in as few as 3-8 years. And diabetes is not their only concern. Diabetes translates to a 50 percent increased risk of heart disease or stroke and complications from hypertension, kidney disease, and neurological problems.
Posts Tagged ‘diabetes’
Seng
Getting Hip To Stopping Diabetes
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Photo by Michael Murphy
I spent this past Father's Day morning riding 20 miles with my son Bobby on our bikes in the National Capital Tour de Cure in Reston, Virginia. No breakfast in bed for me!
Over the past eight years, Spectrum has sponsored our "Spokes Persons" team in the American Diabetes Association's annual ride to stop diabetes. Tour de Cure rides take place throughout the U.S. each year.
Diabetes is not a "sexy" or trendy disease. It's not as socially "hip" as breast cancer, in the sense that hundreds of thousands of people walk or run or ride to raise hundreds of millions of dollars that flow to diabetes research and survivor organizations, as happens with breast cancer. What's breast cancer got that diabetes doesn't?
For starters, breast cancer deeply scares people, affects mostly women, tugs at our emotions, and generally gets our attention in a big way when we hear about a friend or family member with a diagnosis. And breast cancer reigns supreme among awareness, advocacy and funding.
Too far down the respect scale, too many of the people afflicted with or at risk of diabetes don't understand the severity of the illness. There's a lack of fear due to a lack of education, real appreciation for the devastation diabetes can cause. We are nationally unobsessed with diabetes, unfortunately. (more...)
Chaffee
Food Friday: Can the FDA Light Up Our Brains?
Friday, April 9th, 2010A few weeks ago, I was listening to a radio interview with Sheena Iyengar who was discussing the research she did for her new book The Art of Choosing. Iyengar is a professor at Columbia University School of Business and a well-known expert on the study of choice - how we make choices and how they affect our lives. It is a subject close to the heart of anyone working in the field of chronic disease treatment and prevention with its focus on getting people to make the choices-particularly about diet and exercise-- necessary to stay healthy. Study after study has confirmed that educating individuals about risks and how to avoid them isn't enough to trigger behavior changes. So what else should we be doing?
Over the past few years we've been listening to a national debate about how to address America's obesity epidemic, which is costing us $147 billion each year and is a major contributor to diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer. It has also become an epidemic among our children, with one in six classified as obese.
Last month when the First Lady launched her Let's Move campaign aimed at reducing childhood obesity, questions about choice were very much a part of the conversation. Who and what are responsible for creating this problem? Americans are ambivalent about the question, with many believing it is a matter of individual choice. But public health officials see it a different way. They believe that we need to change our "obesogenic" environment, which promotes increased food intake, unhealthful foods and physical inactivity. Tom Frieden, who heads the Centers for Disease Control, is the lead author on a compelling article in Health Affairs about how to tackle the problem. And there is no ambivalence in his prescription for change:
"Reversing obesity is not going to be done successfully with individual effort. It will be done successfully as a society only with societal effort...We got to this stage of the epidemic because of a change in our environment. And only a change in our environment again will allow us to get back to a healthier place..." (more...)
Maynard
Chronic Monday: Diabetes and Behavioral Economics
Monday, March 8th, 2010This is the first in our series titled "Chronic Monday," which will highlight pertinent issues in the chronic disease community.
According to a study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, learning that you are about to develop diabetes isn't enough to trigger the behavior changes necessary to stave off the disease. Compounding the challenge for prevention advocates is this statistic: approximately one of every three adults in America are prediabetic, but less than 10 percent of them are aware of it. As many of us already know, diabetes is one serious disease with life threatening implications. According to the American Diabetes Association, more than 65% of people with diabetes will die from heart disease or stroke. (more...)
Walsh
Schmerin
The App Lab: Convenience for Chronic Pain
Monday, January 11th, 2010The App Lab is a reoccurring series on The Full Spectrum Blog which introduces and analyzes iPhone and smartphone applications related to the health and science industries.
Nearly one in two Americans suffers from a chronic disease. Characterized by their reoccurrence and long-lasting symptoms, chronic diseases can often be overwhelming and burdensome. The boom in iPhone applications has introduced a wide variety of technology to help patients better control their health through the convenience and privacy of their mobile phones.
Below is a sampling of popular iPhone apps for the management of chronic diseases.
Glucose Buddy
The Glucose Buddy iPhone app
Diabetes is a chronic disease which affects nearly 8% of the world's population. The most popular diabetes-related iPhone app is Glucose Buddy, which allows diabetics to record and monitor their glucose levels, as well as their medicine, food and physical activity. The app then provides detailed color-coded logs and graphs of the user's statistics, which can be emailed to a doctor or exported to Excel documents.
WaveSense
Launched by AgaMatrix, maker of glucose monitoring products, WaveSense Diabetes Manager is an electronic logbook for diabetes data management. WaveSense provides graphing of glucose data, automatic mealtime tagging of results, insulin dosage management and statistical analysis of glucose results. (more...)
