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10 WAYS TO AVOID DIABETES.

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Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects millions of people worldwide. Uncontrolled cases can cause blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and other serious conditions. Before diabetes is diagnosed, there is a period where blood sugar levels are high but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. This is known as prediabetes.

1.  Cut on sugar and Refined carbs.

Eating sugary foods and refined carbs can put at-risk individuals on the fast track to developing diabetes. Your body rapidly breaks these foods down into small sugar molecules, which are absorbed into your bloodstream. The resulting rise in blood sugar stimulates your pancreas to produce insulin, a hormone that helps sugar get out of the bloodstream and into your body’s cells.

In people with prediabetes, the body’s cells are resistant to insulin’s action, so sugar remains high in the blood. To compensate, the pancreas produces more insulin, attempting to bring blood sugar down to a healthy level. Over time, this can lead to progressively higher blood sugar and insulin levels, until the condition eventually turns into type 2 diabetes.

2. workout everyday

Performing physical activity on a regular basis may help prevent diabetes. Exercise increases the insulin sensitivity of your cells. So when you exercise, less insulin is required to keep your blood sugar levels under control. Working out more frequently seems to lead to improvements in insulin response and function. One study in people at risk of diabetes found that burning more than 2,000 calories weekly via exercise was required to achieve these benefits.

3. Drink water

What’s more, sticking with water most of the time helps you avoid beverages that are high in sugar, preservatives and other questionable ingredients. Sugary beverages like soda and punch have been linked to an increased risk of both type 2 diabetes and latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA). Drinking water instead of other beverages may help control blood sugar and insulin levels, thereby reducing the risk of diabetes.

LADA is a form of type 1 diabetes that occurs in people over 18 years of age. Unlike the acute symptoms seen with type 1 diabetes in childhood, LADA develops slowly, requiring more treatment as the disease progresses.

4. Lose weight if you are over weight

Although not everyone who develops type 2 diabetes is overweight or obese, the majority are.What’s more, those with prediabetes tend to carry excess weight in their midsection and around abdominal organs like the liver. This is known as visceral fat. Excess visceral fat promotes inflammation and insulin resistance, which significantly increase the risk of diabetes

Carrying excess weight, particularly in the abdominal area, increases the likelihood of developing diabetes. Losing weight may significantly reduce the risk of diabetes.

5. Quit Smoking

Smoking has been shown to cause or contribute to many serious health conditions, including heart disease, emphysema and cancers of the lung, breast, prostate and digestive tract. There’s also research linking smoking and second-hand smoke exposure to type 2 diabetes 

6. Eat high-fiber Diet

Studies in obese, elderly and prediabetic individuals have shown that it helps keep blood sugar and insulin levels low. Consuming a good fiber source at each meal can help prevent spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels, which may help reduce your risk of developing diabetes.

7. Optimize Vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D is important for blood sugar control. Indeed, studies have found that people who don’t get enough vitamin D, or whose blood levels are too low, have a greater risk of all types of diabetes. Good food sources of vitamin D include fatty fish and cod liver oil. In addition, sun exposure can increase vitamin D levels in the blood.

8. Minimum your intake of processed food

One clear step you can take to improve your health is to minimize your consumption of processed food.  They’re linked to all sorts of health problems, including heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

Studies suggest that cutting back on packaged foods that are high in vegetable oils, refined grains and additives may help reduce the risk of diabetes. Minimizing processed foods and focusing on whole foods with protective effects on health may help decrease the risk of diabetes.

9. Drink coffee or Tea

Although water should be your primary beverage, research suggests that including coffee or tea in your diet may help you avoid diabetes.

Studies have reported that drinking coffee on a daily basis reduced risk of diabetes type 2 by 8–54%, with the greatest effect generally seen in people with the highest consumption. Coffee and tea have antioxidants known as polyphenols that may help protect against diabetes  In addition, green tea contains a unique antioxidant compound called epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) that has been shown to reduce blood sugar release from the liver and increase insulin sensitivity.  

10. Life style change

Rather than viewing prediabetes as a stepping stone to diabetes, it may be helpful to see it as a motivator for making changes that can help reduce your risk. Eating the right foods and adopting other lifestyle behaviors that promote healthy blood sugar and insulin levels will give you the best chance at avoiding diabetes

source: : https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/prevent-diabetes#section14

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Immunotherapy found safe for type 1 diabetes in landmark trial

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Type 1 diabetes is believed to be an autoimmune disorder, so does this mean that immunotherapy could be used to treat it? A landmark trial has investigated the safety of such a therapeutic approach.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that up to 1.05 million people in the United States – or 5 percent of the country’s diabetic population – have type 1 diabetes.

The condition is thought to be an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system – its T cells, specifically – does not recognize the pancreas’ insulin-producing beta cells and mistakenly attacks them. At present, there are no treatments for preventing T cells from killing off the body’s beta cells.

Despite the belief that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition, few studies have tested the possible benefits of immunotherapies in treating the condition, perhaps due to concerns that they might make it worse.

For type 1 diabetes, immunotherapies consist of molecules that imitate a proinsulin peptide. In this context, researchers based in the United Kingdom set out to examine the benefits of immunotherapy in a landmark trial that included a placebo control group.

The study’s first author is Dr. Mohammad Alhadj Ali, of the Cardiff University School of Medicine in the U.K., and the corresponding author is Mark Peakman, Ph.D., a professor of clinical immunology at King’s College London, also in the U.K.

The results were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Proinsulin peptide immunotherapy is ‘safe’

Dr. Ali and team examined the effect of the peptide in 27 people who had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes within the previous 100 days.
For 6 months, the participants received either shots of the immunotherapy or the placebo at 2- or 4-week intervals. Their C-peptide levels – which are markers of insulin – were tested at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, and they were compared with baseline levels.

The trial found no evidence of toxicity or negative side effects, and beta cells were not impaired or reduced as a consequence of the therapy. The authors write, “Treatment was well tolerated with no systemic or local hypersensitivity,” which led the researchers to conclude that “proinsulin peptide immunotherapy is safe.”

Additionally, “Placebo subjects showed a significant decline in stimulated C-peptide (measuring insulin reserve) at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months versus baseline, whereas no significant change was seen in the 4-weekly peptide group at these time points,” say the researchers.

Importantly, over a period of 12 months, the daily insulin intake in the placebo group increased by 50 percent, whereas the treatment group kept stable levels of insulin use.

Although the effects of immunotherapies need to be tested in larger cohorts, the trial offers an encouraging safety profile for the treatment. Speaking to Medical News Today about the clinical implications of such results, Prof. Peakman broke down the findings.

The good safety profile means 3 things:

(i) that we can progress to the next stage, which is to perform an efficacy trial and we hope to start this in 2018;

(ii) that this therapy may be acceptable in children, which is the main group developing type 1 diabetes;

(iii) that we may be able to give the peptide repeatedly over long periods, which may be required to gain full effects.
– Mark Peakman, Ph.D.

Regarding the limitations of the research, Prof. Peakman told us that the small sample size meant that the researchers could not examine how efficacious the treatment was. Consequently, in the future, the researchers plan to conduct a larger study in order to investigate the immunotherapies’ effect on disease progression.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318899.php

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Immunotherapy found safe for type 1 diabetes in landmark trial

/0 Comments/in /by

Type 1 diabetes is believed to be an autoimmune disorder, so does this mean that immunotherapy could be used to treat it? A landmark trial has investigated the safety of such a therapeutic approach.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that up to 1.05 million people in the United States – or 5 percent of the country’s diabetic population – have type 1 diabetes.

The condition is thought to be an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immune system – its T cells, specifically – does not recognize the pancreas’ insulin-producing beta cells and mistakenly attacks them. At present, there are no treatments for preventing T cells from killing off the body’s beta cells.

Despite the belief that type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition, few studies have tested the possible benefits of immunotherapies in treating the condition, perhaps due to concerns that they might make it worse.

For type 1 diabetes, immunotherapies consist of molecules that imitate a proinsulin peptide. In this context, researchers based in the United Kingdom set out to examine the benefits of immunotherapy in a landmark trial that included a placebo control group.

The study’s first author is Dr. Mohammad Alhadj Ali, of the Cardiff University School of Medicine in the U.K., and the corresponding author is Mark Peakman, Ph.D., a professor of clinical immunology at King’s College London, also in the U.K.

The results were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Proinsulin peptide immunotherapy is ‘safe’

Dr. Ali and team examined the effect of the peptide in 27 people who had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes within the previous 100 days.
For 6 months, the participants received either shots of the immunotherapy or the placebo at 2- or 4-week intervals. Their C-peptide levels – which are markers of insulin – were tested at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, and they were compared with baseline levels.

The trial found no evidence of toxicity or negative side effects, and beta cells were not impaired or reduced as a consequence of the therapy. The authors write, “Treatment was well tolerated with no systemic or local hypersensitivity,” which led the researchers to conclude that “proinsulin peptide immunotherapy is safe.”

Additionally, “Placebo subjects showed a significant decline in stimulated C-peptide (measuring insulin reserve) at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months versus baseline, whereas no significant change was seen in the 4-weekly peptide group at these time points,” say the researchers.

Importantly, over a period of 12 months, the daily insulin intake in the placebo group increased by 50 percent, whereas the treatment group kept stable levels of insulin use.

Although the effects of immunotherapies need to be tested in larger cohorts, the trial offers an encouraging safety profile for the treatment. Speaking to Medical News Today about the clinical implications of such results, Prof. Peakman broke down the findings.

The good safety profile means 3 things:

(i) that we can progress to the next stage, which is to perform an efficacy trial and we hope to start this in 2018;

(ii) that this therapy may be acceptable in children, which is the main group developing type 1 diabetes;

(iii) that we may be able to give the peptide repeatedly over long periods, which may be required to gain full effects.
– Mark Peakman, Ph.D.

Regarding the limitations of the research, Prof. Peakman told us that the small sample size meant that the researchers could not examine how efficacious the treatment was. Consequently, in the future, the researchers plan to conduct a larger study in order to investigate the immunotherapies’ effect on disease progression.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318899.php

iMedWorks Ask Platform Links below:

1.  Get a Medical Second Opinion
2.  Search doctors and Request Appointment