There is a new medication for type 2 diabetes that has been approved by the FDA. Tradjenta (linagliptin) is meant to be used as treatment along with good nutrition and exercise. This pill should be taken once a day and it can be used in combination with other type 2 oral medications such as metformin.
Tradjenta makes gut hormones available by blocking an enzyme, DPP-4, that breaks down those gut hormones. That means that this medication is called a DPP-4 inhibitor. With DPP-4 out of the way, the gut hormones are able to tell the pancreas to produce more insulin.
When Tradjenta was taken along with metformin, A1c decreased by 0.6%. With a sulfonylurea, A1c dropped by 0.5%. And Tradjenta plus metformin plus a sulfonylurea caused A1c to decrease by 0.6%.
Louder zzzz’s seem to be the punch line of more jokes than clinical conversations. Looked at as more of an inconvenience than anything serious, snoring is overlooked frequently as a sign for clinical problems or conditions.
Actually, snoring is a sign of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Obstructive sleep apnea is caused by frequent stops in breathing while you sleep. Normally, the breathing is stopped because there is an obstruction of the upper airway.
This occurs most often in overweight, middle-aged and elderly individuals. Obstructive sleep apnea results in low levels of oxygen in your blood (because you are not breathing in enough air), waking up often during the night, and being very sleepy during the day.
The following article was published on the National Institute of Health (NIH) website earlier this week. The article explains that researchers in California discovered adding nicotine to red blood cells increases the Hemoglobin A1c.
This means that every time a person with diabetes smokes a cigarette, they are raising their blood sugar, increasing their risk for heart disease and they are at higher risk for other diabetes complications.
Here are the main points of the study:
Everyone should quit smoking, but people with diabetes really need to quit smoking.
In the study, nicotine raised glucose levels in red blood cells, the same thing that happens in the human body.
In the study, A1c increased by 8.8%-34.5% depending on the amount of exposure to nicotine.
This means that nicotine patches and other quitting methods with nicotine should be used for a short amount of time only to quit. The nicotine replacements will still raise your blood sugar.
Smoking increases your risk for heart disease and other diabetes complications, and smoking might be a contributor to uncontrolled diabetes.
Go ahead and read this article and then visit this to start your road to freedom from smoking and nicotine.
Diabetes is a disease that affects your whole body, from your eyes to your blood vessels, to your toes. But many people with diabetes live wonderful, healthy lives and are not held back by complications like nerve damage or heart problems.
They put extra effort into each day than the average person and come out with more satisfaction knowing they are conquering more than the average person.
You probably know that managing diabetes can be complicated, but there are a few changes you can make with major impact.
Controlling your blood sugar is the biggest improvement you can make but a lot goes into controlling your blood sugar:
controlling carbohydrate intake;
possibly taking medication or insulin;
exercising;
checking your blood sugar regularly;
reducing stress;
and the list goes on.
The following simple changes will help lead to better blood sugar control along with your other treatments, but making all these changes together will give you the biggest impact on preventing complications.
Checking your blood sugar right before you eat a meal is an important habit to get into. It will give you an idea what your blood sugar has been doing for the last 3-4 hours and it will give you direction in what and how much you should eat at that meal.
So what do you do if your blood sugar is high when you check right before a meal? It is important to make sure that you don't cause your blood sugar to go higher and stay there longer with your next meal.
Remember that your goal should be 90-130mg/dL before a meal if you haven’t eaten since your last meal; but if you ate a snack less than 2 hours prior, your blood sugar is just fine if it is under 180mg/dL.
It is difficult to quickly fix high blood sugar if you are just about to eat, but here are a few tips and actions that can help prevent that high reading or help you bring it down so you will still be under 180mg/dL 2 hours after that meal you are about to eat.
You know the protocol, but do you actually follow it? Testing your blood sugar becomes second nature when you do it everyday, several times a day, and it is easy to get a little lax on following all the right steps.
A new Dutch study published in Diabetes Care might give you a sigh of relief to know that you can still get fairly accurate results when you are not able to be the most vigilant with your finger pricking cleanliness.
The study watched people with diabetes test their blood sugar under different circumstances: washing and drying hands; no hand washing; after touching fruit and not washing hands; after touching fruit and then washing hands.
For some people, the idea of skipping your morning pick-me-up Dr. Pepper or missing out on your SoBe fruit punch with lunch is a devastating idea. But you can do this!
Slowly cutting back and replacing your sugary drinks with better alternatives can be such a smooth transition, you won’t even notice!
Follow this step by step guide to slash out that liquid candy that you know is hurting your body and you’ll start to notice several benefits: much better blood sugar control; losing weight from cutting out those liquid calories; improved energy; better teeth and gum health; and a feeling of accomplishment for doing something healthy for your body.
The American Diabetes Association, your dietitian and diabetes educator have taken the stance that there are no foods off limits for people living with diabetes. But there are some foods you should eat and drink less often.
You’ve been told that it is OK to work real sugar, dessert, fruit juice, and other sugary foods into your diabetes meal plan. You need to watch how much and how often, but these are still foods you can eat.
This is still true today, but there is more information now that should urge you to choose sugary drinks even less or maybe not at all. Just because you are allowed to eat or drink something doesn’t mean that you should.
A new study from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London found that people who drank more soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks have higher blood pressure levels than people that do not drink them. And the more sugary drinks that people have, the higher their blood pressure will go.
They also found that the people who were drinking these sodas and fruit drinks more often tended to weigh more and eat/drink more calories throughout the day than someone who didn’t drink sugary beverages.
Athero-what?!? Atherosclerosis: “an arteriosclerosis characterized by atheromatous deposits in and fibrosis of the inner layer of the arteries.”
Well that didn’t help at all did it?! This is a disease that causes your arteries to become hard and narrowed (that process is called arteriosclerosis) with fatty deposit (atheromatous deposits) and extra tough tissue (fibrosis) in the artery walls.
Arteries can even become completely blocked in atherosclerosis. Your arteries are blood vessels that carry blood from your heart to the rest of your body, so atherosclerosis, blocking arteries, can lead to heart disease.
There is more proof! Vinegar not only helps lower post meal blood sugar levels, but it also seems to lower the number of calories you eat throughout the day.
The Arizona State University researchers that conducted this newest study said, "The antiglycemic properties of vinegar are evident when small amounts of vinegar are ingested with meals composed of complex carbohydrates."
They had study participants consume drinks with either 20 grams of apple cider vinegar, 49 grams of water and 1 teaspoon of saccharine right after eating breakfast. And they found that blood glucose levels were 35% lower after drinking the vinegar drink compared to the water drink. And they found that the participants ate at least 300 calories less throughout the day after the vinegar drink in the morning!
The health benefits of vinegar are getting more and more evidence behind it now. There are several studies that ultimately show blood sugar levels are lower after eating or drinking vinegar. But there are several different claims as to how, when and how much.
There is a new medication for type 2 diabetes that has been approved by the FDA. Tradjenta (linagliptin) is meant to be used as treatment along with good nutrition and exercise. This pill should be taken once a day and it can be used in combination with other type 2 oral medications such as metformin.
