The Blood Sugar 101 FaceBook Page is Where You'll Find Tidbits Too Minor for A Blog Post

Yes, I know FB is the greatest time suck ever invented, and that their entire reason for existing is to steal your personal information. But enough of you asked me to set up a page that I did, and it's getting a respectable number of fans.

I'm posting snippets and links there that don't deserve a whole blog post but which are worthy of your attention.

You can post questions there, too, for other fans of the page to comment on.

The FB page is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Blood-Sugar-101/194439440617073?sk=wall

 

The world is full of people who want to have diabetes

No. I'm not about to rant on about people eating terrible foods that ruin their blood sugar. My topic is something else entirely.

For the past few weeks, for some reason, my email box has been full of letters from people who are desperately hoping that they have diabetes. They don't. In fact, most of them have blood sugar numbers you and I would kill for. When I explain this, they come back saying, "But my mother had diabetes" or "But when I ate an entire chocolate cake my blood sugar rose a whole 30 points. And my fasting blood sugar the next day was 98. That can't be normal!"

Before you dismiss these people as garden variety hypochondriacs, let me explain what's going on.

All these people do have something wrong with them--usually something quite painful or very disturbing. They've been to doctor after doctor who have given them the usual ten minutes of bored attention and then sent them off with a shake of the head or an order for lab tests that come back, almost invariably, with normal values, usually because they are ordering only the standardized tests that turn up the most common medical problems.

So these people email me because they are desperate. They're in pain. Their symtoms are making it hard to go about their daily lives. They've been trolling the internet, scanning for anything that mentions these symptoms, looking for relief, and invariably they end up reading about diabetes because diabetes causes such a wide variety of symptoms. Tiredness, painful feet, stomach pain, ulcers, blurred vision, kidney pain. You name it, someone with diabetes will develop it and post about it somewhere.

So that is why when these people who need help read that doctors do a very poor job of diagnosing diabetes a light goes off in their minds and suddenly they're filled with hope. Maybe that is what is wrong with them, diabetes, and if it is, then there's hope, because once they have a diagnosis they can treat it.

So they email me and I send them off to test their blood sugar, and almost always, when they respond, I have to deliver the news that their blood sugars are completely normal. Whatever is wrong with them, it isn't an obscure, difficult-to-diagnose case of diabetes. Their fasting sugars are under 100 mg/dl. Their sugars don't go over 120 mg/dl after meals. Diabetes is not likely to be causing their symptoms.

You'd be amazed how many people find this upsetting news. They write back to me begging me to consider this or that extra fact. Maybe it isn't diabetes but pre-diabetes. Maybe they hadn't eaten enough carbs when they tested their sugars to be sure. They went low on their glucose tolerance test, isn't that a sign of something?

When I tell them, no, it isn't. They can get testy. I get tempted to tell them to go away because there are dozens of people with diabetes who also need help, and they are taking up my time, but I don't. Because I've been in their shoes--trying to get help for some devastating symptom that doctors wouldn't take seriously and checking out anything that sounds like it might help. I know what a poor job most doctors do diagnosing anything that isn't one of the 85 common conditions they studied in med school.

But there isn't much I can do for them, and I also tell them that whatever is wrong with them, they should rejoice that they don't have diabetes. Because as most you reading this know, even after they diagnose it, most doctors do a lousy job of treating diabetes.

But taking in all these people's miserable experience with doctors who won't diagnose painful conditions, and adding in my own experience with the same, I have to wonder: Why is it that the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems in the world are devoted almost exclusively to delivering spam that is tailored to your tastes, instead of helping you find out what's wrong with you so you can fix it?

Don't all answer at once. I know it isn't quite that simple.

But if you are one of the masses of people with uncommon, painful, worrying conditions, don't give up. Keep reading and researching. Eventually you may come up with something that should point you in a good direction, and even if you can't go back to your doctor--or a new one, preferably young, recently trained, still enthusiastic, and hungry for new patients, and demand the tests you need to sort out what is going on with your body.

 

My Second Novel Has Just Been Published

No one likes to be defined by their diabetes, not even me. Though I put a lot of time into dealing with it and sharing what I learn with you and other visitors to this site, I have a whole life outside of diabetes which for the past two and a half years has revolved around writing romance novels, since I was fortunate enough to be offered a contract by one of the "Big Six" publishers.

So I'd like to let those of you who enjoy Historical Romances know that my second novel, Star Crossed Seduction is now available.

Based on feedback from people who read the book before publication, Star Crossed Seduction, despite the romance-y title and cover (over which I have no control) also appeals to people who don't usually read romance but enjoy upscale historical fiction, due to the high quality of the writing and the depth of the character development you'll find in its pages. You can learn what it's about, read what reviewers have had to say about it, and find links to where you can buy it online HERE.

Star Crossed Seduction is being stocked in many book stores and some of the larger Walmarts. It is also available in all common e-book formats.

As noted before, my publisher will be contributing a portion of every book sold to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, as part of its "K.I.S.S and Teal" campaign which is harnessing the power of Romance novels to reach women readers to raise awareness of this deadly and increasingly common disease.

To celebrate the release of Star Crossed Seduction, I've put together a contest which gives you a chance to win a prize and me a chance to see my book displayed around the country (and the world), which I enjoy because I live in a rural area with almost no bookstores, so I rarely get to see my books on a store shelf live and in person.

All you need to do to enter it is snap a photo of Star Crossed Seduction and either upload it using the form you'll find HERE, email it to me, or post it on the Jenny Brown's Romance Novels page on FaceBook. The winner, chosen at random will get a $25 gift certificate to their favorite online bookstore.

That's all I'll say about the book here, but if you want to keep tabs on my writing career, just "like" the FaceBook page

Six New Diabetes Gene Varients Identified in South Asian Populations

A new study, published in Nature Genetics, emphasizes the diversity of the many physiological breakdowns doctors lump together under the title "Type 2 Diabetes."

You can read a good summary of the study here:

Six New Genetic Variants Linked to Type 2 Diabetes Discovered in South Asians

View the abstract of the actual study here:

Genome-wide association study in individuals of South Asian ancestry identifies six new type 2 diabetes susceptibility loci. Jaspal S. Kooner, et al. Nature Genetics, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/ng.921

The genes involved are GRB14, ST6GAL1, VPS26A, HMG20A, AP3S2 and HNF4A. Of these I recognize HNF4A, which is a gene that has also been identified as the cause of MODY-1 and of the diabetes found in Danish and Ashkenazi Jewish populations. It causes diabetes because when it is damaged, it disturbs the sequence by which a normal pancreatic beta cell is induced to secrete insulin when blood sugars rise over a threshold.

People who have a damaged HNF4A gene respond very strongly to drugs that stimulate insulin secretion because they bypass the stage of the insulin secretion function where HNF4A plays a part. Of these drugs, Prandin and Gliclazide have been found to be the safest. The other sulfonylurea drugs are cheaper, but they are associated with an increased risk of heart attack because they also stimulate a receptor in heart muscle. (Details Here.)

Note: Gliclazide is not sold in the United States. It is marketed as Glizid, Glyloc and Reclide in India and as Diamicron in most other parts of the world.

GRB14 affects insulin receptor signaling and when it is broken it appears to increase insulin resistance.

HMG20A has previously been associated with a greater incidence of diabetes in obese subjects. (Details here.)

This study also identifies a gene that is new to me, ST6GAL1, as affecting the ability to secrete insulin.

ST6GAL1, AP3S2 and VPS26A have something to to with Golgi bodies and do not seem to have been hitherto associated with diabetes. Gogli bodies are parts of the cell that process and assemble proteins for secretion. Perhaps when this gene is damaged insulin secretion is, too. The Nature study abstract reports that ST6GAL1 is associated with impaired insulin secretion but doesn't comment on the others.

What really sticks out here, though, which has been the case with all the genes identified in studies of all populations with "Type 2 diabetes" is that most of the genes identified impact on insulin secretion, NOT insulin resistance and most have nothing to do with obesity.

People mostly seem to get Type 2 diabetes because they don't have a normal ability to secrete insulin. As documented HERE, people with these defective genes often do get fat, but they get fat after their blood sugar starts to rise, probably in response to the ravenous hunger that comes with high blood sugars as they drop back to normal.

As is the case world wide, most people who are obese, even morbidly so don't develop Type 2 diabetes. Only about 10% of any population does, while in some parts of the world, including sections of the U.S. well over 50% of the population is obese.

That said, the question no one in the scientific establishment is asking is this: is it possible that the genetic damage we are seeing which underlies Type 2 diabetes is coming from toxic exposures in our environment? South Asia industrialized very quickly and is notorious for the horrendous environmental conditions that have accompanied this industrialization. We know that herbicides like atrazine, and chemicals used in industrial processes like arsenic, are associated with high rates of both obesity and diabetes. But is anyone looking at what genetic changes these compounds and hundreds of others make?

It's time that we stopped blaming people for causing their diabetes by overeating. Yes, people are overeating, but this is almost always because something major is broken in the built-in systems that regulate appetite. The rise in obesity and in diabetes incidence (which, by the way is a much smaller rise than the rise in obesity), goes back to 1970, which is, coincidentally about a decade after the world replaced wood, metal and glass with plastic for most objects in our immediate environment.

This is not a coincidence, folks. I'm old enough to remember the pre-plastic days, and to remember that people did not walk everywhere or eat small portions back then. That is a fantasy created by the industrial powers who want you to blame yourself for your diabetes and ignore the massive pollution of our environment with the toxic chemicals that make their companies rich.

You can learn about the many chemicals, pharamceuticals, and pollutants that have been linked to causing diabetes HERE.

 

Hurricane Preparedness with Diabetes

I'm still hoping the weatherfolk are crying wolf on this one, because the current predictions are that my little town is in the center of the hurricane track and that we can expect week-long power outages. If you don't hear from me after Sunday, you'll know why.

But there's still time to take steps to prepare yourself for the worst, diabetes-style. Here are the basics.

1. Make sure you have enough meds to get yourself through two weeks, because if the pharmacies and gas stations don't have power, you won't be able to fill prescriptions. Ask your pharmacist now for extras if you are in one of the warning areas.

2. If you use insulin, make sure you have some kind of cooler and ice packs so that you can keep your insulin from getting too hot. Don't put insulin directly in contact with freezer packs or ice as cold temperatures will ruin it.

3. Stock up on protein foods that survive without refrigeration like nuts and protein powder so that if you can't cook, you will have something to eat. Avoid salty snack type proteins as your access to water might be limited.

4. Keep your meds and meter right by you with the things you will grab if you have to make a fast exit. I mean VERY fast. Like if the roof is coming down.

Hopefully none of you will need this advice, but you never know when you will be the unlucky person that ends up in the shelter, or in the midst of the flood. Overpreparation is better than the opposite.

Hope you all keep well and safe. . .