Medical Med

Coffee and tea drinkers are less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than nondrinkers, with those drinking three to four cups a day at a 25 percent lower risk for the disease than those who drink less than two cups, a large analysis has found. It does not matter whether the drinks are caffeinated or not, said the study, published in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

The analysis does not prove that drinking tea or coffee lowers the risk of the so-called adult-onset diabetes, but it is not the first study to report such a link. And it goes further than other studies, finding that for caffeinated coffee, risk dropped by 5 percent to 10 percent with each additional cup consumed, which the researchers say suggests a causal relationship.

Those drinking more than six cups of coffee a day were at 40 percent lower risk for diabetes than nondrinkers; the figure for those who drank less than a cup per day was just 4 percent.

Some studies have indicated that chemical components of tea and coffee may have beneficial effects on glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, but the evidence is mixed. “Caffeine can’t be the answer, because you see the same sort of overall response from diabetes with decaf as with caffeinated coffee,” said the paper’s senior author, Mark Woodward, a professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

Experts have found that regular and intensive exercise, which lasted only three minutes, can greatly enhance metabolism.

Scientists from the University Scottish “Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh believe that if all people exercise a few days in this way, you can reduce the risk for emergence of diabetes, and this is because the improvement of sugar metabolism in the body.

Study published in the journal “BMC endocrine Disorders”, in which participated 16 men shows that the risk of occurrence of type 2 diabetes can be significantly reduced with regular exercise. However, many people consider that not to commit  that exercises regularly.

This study has revealed that only some intense muscle exercises, each of which would last only 30 seconds, dramatically improves the metabolism only after two weeks.

However, although agree that these results are quite interesting, representatives of the British Association for the sugar disease “Diabetes UK”, says : The number of participants in the study was too small, so this study should be conducted in a larger number volunteers to confirm if they happen so. /MedicalMed

In on study involving 785 womens, scientists have discovered that womens with low vitamin B12 are more vulnerable to suffer from diabetes gestacional.

The authors of the study published in the journal “Diabetologia” claim they do not know why such thing happens.

Gestacional Diabetes is a condition where women without previous history of diabetes during pregnancy have increased levels of blood sugar.

Diabetes (diabetes mellitus) is classed as a metabolism disorder. Metabolism refers to the way our bodies use digested food for energy and growth. Most of what we eat is broken down into glucose. Glucose is a form of sugar in the blood – it is the principal source of fuel for our bodies.

When our food is digested the glucose makes its way into our bloodstream. Our cells use the glucose for energy and growth. However, glucose cannot enter our cells without insulin being present – insulin makes it possible for our cells to take in the glucose.

Insulin is a hormone that is produced by the pancreas. After eating, the pancreas automatically releases an adequate quantity of insulin to move the glucose present in our blood into the cells, and lowers the blood sugar level.

A person with diabetes has a condition in which the quantity of glucose in the blood is too elevated (hyperglycemia). This is because the body either does not produce enough insulin, produces no insulin, or has cells that do not respond properly to the insulin the pancreas produces. This results in too much glucose building up in the blood. This excess blood glucose eventually passes out of the body in urine. So, even though the blood has plenty of glucose, the cells are not getting it for their essential energy and growth requirements.

Why is it called Diabetes Mellitus?

Diabetes comes from Greek, and it means a siphon. Aretus the Cappadocian, a Greek physician during the second century A.D., named the condition diabainein. He described patients who were passing too much water (polyuria) – like a siphon. The word became “diabetes” from the English adoption of the Medieval Latin diabetes.

In 1675 Thomas Willis added mellitus to the term, although it is commonly referred to simply as diabetes. Mel in Latin means honey; the urine and blood of people with diabetes has excess glucose, and glucose is sweet like honey. Diabetes mellitus could literally mean “siphoning off sweet water”.

In ancient China people observed that ants would be attracted to some people’s urine, because it was sweet. The term “Sweet Urine Disease” was coined.

There are three main types of diabetes:

Diabetes Type 1 – You produce no insulin at all.
Diabetes Type 2 – You don’t produce enough insulin, or your insulin is not working properly.
Gestational Diabetes – You develop diabetes just during your pregnancy.

(World Health Organization)

Diabetes Types 1 & 2 are chronic medical conditions – this means that they are persistent and perpetual. Gestational Diabetes usually resolves itself after the birth of the child.

Treatment is effective and important

All types of diabetes are treatable, but Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes last a lifetime; there is no known cure. The patient receives regular insulin, which became medically available in 1921. The treatment for a patient with Type 1 is mainly injected insulin, plus some dietary and exercise adherence.

Patients with Type 2 are usually treated with tablets, exercise and a special diet, but sometimes insulin injections are also required.

If diabetes is not adequately controlled the patient has a significantly higher risk of developing complications, such as hypoglycemia, ketoacidosis, and nonketotic hypersosmolar coma. Longer term complications could be cardiovascular disease, retinal damage, chronic kidney failure, nerve damage, poor healing of wounds, gangrene on the feet which may lead to amputation, and erectile dysfunction.

DIABETES STATISTICS:
In the USA – 2007

17.9m people are diagnosed with diabetes
5.7m people are undiagnosed with diabetes
57m people have pre-diabetes
186,300 (0.22%) people under 20 have diabetes
1 in every 400 to 600 under 20-year olds have Type 1 diabetes
2m adolescents have pre-diabetes
23.5m (10.7%) of those over 20 have diabetes
12.2m of those over 60 have diabetes
12m men (11.2%) have diabetes
11.5m women (10.2%) have diabetes

American Diabetes Association