1. Prevent diabetes from ever occuring.
2. Develop the cure to diabetes.
3. Or take care of the people who have it in order to prevent complications.

All three approaches are actively being pursued by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CDC, or Center for Disease Control. The National Institutes of Health is involved especially in doing research of methods to cure both type 1 diabetes, and type 2 diabetes, but they are focusing on type 1 diabetes. The Center for Disease Control on the other hand, is focusing most of the programs that it runs on ensuring that all proven science is put into daily practice for those who are dealing with diabetes. The general idea is that if every piece of important research and science is made meaningful in the day-to-day lives of people who are dealing with diabetes, then the research is not wasted. These are the approaches for a cure that are currently being pursued:

• Pancreas transplant.

• Transplantation of Islet cells which produce insulin.

• Development of an artificial Pancreas.

• Genetic Manipulation, which will create pseudo islet cells by inserting the human insulin gene into fat or muscle cells which do not normally make their own insulin.

These approaches are still facing challenges, like preventing rejection by the immune system, finding enough adequate insulin cells, keeping transplanted cells alive, etc. Progress is being made fairly consistently however, in all of these areas.

Is insulin a cure for diabetes? No, insulin is not a cure for diabetes, and neither is injecting it. Insulin can allow a diabetic to survive, but many devastating consequences can be caused by the disease when the blood sugar level is crudely controlled. The insulin injections a diabetic takes cannot be as precisely or as continuously adjusted to maintain sugar levels that are safe, in the way that blood sugar and insulin levels match normally.

The diabetic can risk a dramatic injection of insulin when blood sugar levels are too low. These reactions can include loss of consciousness, confusion, coma and even possibly death if not handled properly. When the injected insulin is below the amount that is required, the diabetic’s blood sugar can rise to cause damage to the diabetic’s eyes, heart, nerves, kidneys and blood vessels. Insulin is not a cure for diabetes, because it does not restore the diabetic’s ability to adjust their production of insulin every minute, which is a normal part of living.

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Halle Berry cured her diabetes?

Since November is American Diabetes Month, the media is spotlighting celebrities with Diabetes in an attempt to show that people, no matter the color, shape or economical status are being affected by diabetes.

ABC News: Stars Battling Diabetes is piece on the ABC News site which spotlights 14 celebrities throughout history which have battled diabetes. The site gives a picture of the celebrity along with a brief history of when they were diagnosed with diabetes.

One celebrity’s story really popped out from the rest… this celebrity claims to have cured type 1 diabetes.

Halle Berry has made claims that she was able to cure herself of type 1 diabetes. How did she do this? By weening herself off of insulin. Gosh, it’s so easy. How did all of those doctors miss the cure? Just ween the patient off of insulin. It makes sense.

Except that type 1 diabetics do not produce insulin and so once you slowly weened down their insulin dose to zero…they would die. Except for that little detail I would say that Halle Berry is onto something here.

So what was the response to Halle Berry’s statement from doctors in this country? Impossible, type 1 diabetes has no cure. It is possible, the doctors say, that Halle Berry actually had type 2 diabetes which a person can overcome. If she was smart enough to figure out how to cure diabetes, wouldn’t she be smart enough to know which type she had? You would think.

Other than the claims of curing type 1 diabetes, the ABC piece was great. It is pretty interesting to find out some of the celebrities which live with diabetes and some of the things that they have done to support awareness of this disease. Some of the celebrities on the list include:

• Halle Berry – Self proclaimed diabetes curer
• Delta Burke – Leader of the Let’s Talk Campaign
• Dick Clark – Strives to raise awareness of the link between diabetes and heart disease
• Mary Tyler Moore – Chairperson of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
• Della Reese – Spokesperson for Glaxo Smith Kline’s Stronger Than Diabetes

Diabetes has been around for a long time but since the year 2000, it has caught the attention of everyone in this country as becoming an epidemic. The purpose of American Diabetes Month is to raise awareness not only about the epidemic we are dealing with but also to show that with education diabetes can be avoided.

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The passing of H.R.3, which was originally vetoed by President Bush, would ease up on the existing restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. It would support the advancement of research using embryonic stem cell research while still maintaining strict ethical guidelines. The vote on the re-introduction of this legislation is said to take place this coming Thursday, January 11.

President Bush had announced federal regulations placed in 2001 which restricted the number of human embryonic stem cells available for federally funded research. This regulation has seriously slowed down the progress that can be made in finding a cure for diabetes.

It is my opinion that the American people want this bill passed again. The president needs to take that into consideration before calling for another veto. There are nearly 21 million Americans with diabetes at this time. The only hope we can see in sight for reaching a cure is through stem cell research. The President needs to work with congress to reach an outcome that is satisfactory to all Americans and ensures advancement in the cure for diabetes through our only available means … Stem Cell Research.

Please Mr. President, let the United States of America work towards finding a cure. Don’t set us back years in research. Lives are at stake.

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The exact cause of type 2 diabetes is still unknown. Many doctors subscribe to the “lipocentric hypothesis,” which pins the blame on extra pounds. Even if the body makes lots of insulin to process or store blood sugars, the theory goes, the extra weight overwhelms it. “The fat in your belly is very insulin-resistant,” says George Fielding, a bariatric surgeon at New York University. “So as that fat increases, the insulin in the body just isn’t strong enough to work against it, and the person gets diabetes.”

That explanation, however doesn’t work for everyone, because it fails to account for the 20 percent of type 2 diabetes patients who aren’t overweight. I can’t say I’m one of them but for what I eat and the amount I exercise now. I shouldn’t be this big and my blood sugars shouldn’t ever be above 200.

“They’re very active, and they eat properly,” says Paul Robertson, a prominent diabetes researcher in Seattle. As for what could be causing the illness in those cases, says Robertson, “we’re left scratching our heads.”

I’m just not at the point right now where I can put in a WHOLE LOT of time into this although it is my health.

When used as a last resort for weight management, certain gastric bypass procedures have been known to completely reverse, or at least mitigate, type 2 diabetes. Until recently, researchers had assumed that weight loss alone was somehow responsible for this benefit. However, new research in rodents and very preliminary work in humans suggest that hormonal and metabolic changes caused by the surgery must be responsible, not simple weight loss, said Karen Foster-Schubert, MD, acting instructor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Something that seems very positive is that the medications for type 2 diabetes in 10 out of 11 obese adolescents treated with the procedure have stopped taking their meds all together.

I’d really like to hear from you and your thoughts on whether this is my solution or do I go on fighting diabetes the rest of my life.

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