Could Marijuana Reduce Diabetes Risk?

Smoking marijuana — even if the ensuing junk-food binge can’t be avoided — may mean you’re less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, according to research published in The American Journal of Medicine.

Fasting insulin and glucose data from 4,657 National Health and Nutrition Survey participants revealed that “current users” of marijuana were part of the least likely demographic to have common risk factors for diabetes.

Marijuana smokers who admitted to being “current users” — not previous users — had the lowest fasting insulin and glucose levels and body mass index. High fasting insulin levels are considered evidence of insulin resistance —  the inability of the body to respond properly to insulin - a risk factor for pre-diabetes.

“Previous epidemiologic studies have found lower prevalence rates of obesity and diabetes mellitus in marijuana users compared to people who have never used marijuana, suggesting a relationship between cannabinoids and peripheral metabolic processes, but ours is the first study to investigate the relationship between marijuana use and fasting insulin, glucose, and insulin resistance,”  stated lead investigator Murray A. Mittleman, MD, DrPH, of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, in a press release.

Despite the common stereotype of marijuana users craving high-calorie food and lots of it — “the munchies” — pot use was also linked to having a lower body mass index in the study, another factor not often associated with diabetes.

READ MORE: ttp://www.everydayhealth.com/type-2-diabetes/toke-up-glucose-down-marijuana-linked-to-better-blood-sugar-control-2789.aspx

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Hospital Pricing Must Be Shown

Hospitals will now be required to tell patients how much they charge for procedures, a move federal officials said should spark competition and lower costs.

The rule change came as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released data What showed startling difference in hospital changes for 100 common medical procedures. I n some cases, hospitals charged double or more than a hospital in the same area.

“Currently, consumers don’t know what a hospital is charging them or their insurance company for a given procedure, like a knee replacement, or how much of a price difference there is at different hospitals, even with the same city,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “This date and new data centers will help fill that gap.”

She said the information would create incentives for hospitals to keep their prices low.

“Hospitals that charge two or three times the going rate will rightfully face higher scrutiny,” said Jonathan Blum, director of the Center for Medicare at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

He added that higher prices do not necessarily correspond to better quality of care.

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Exercise Reduces Brain Damage from Alcohol

Aerobic exercise can help prevent and even reverse some brain damage linked to high alcohol intake, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The finding, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, suggests that routine aerobic exercise such as running, bicycling, and walking may help reduce the damage to the brain’s “white matter” among people who drink alcohol excessively.

White matter is made up of bundles of nerve cells that act as transmission lines that control communication between several different areas of the brain, according to one author, Hollis Karoly, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder’s psychology and neuroscience department.

Karoly explains, ”We found that for people who drink a lot and exercise a lot, there was not a strong relationship between alcohol and white matter. But for people who drink a lot and don’t exercise, our study showed the integrity of white matter is compromised in several areas of the brain. It basically means white matter is not moving messages between areas of the brain as efficiently as normal.”

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Mr. Divabetic at the NY International Auto Show 2013 video

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Breast Cancer Death Rates Higher for Black Women

Black breast cancer patients are more likely to diet han white patients, regardless of the type of cancer, according to a new study.

This suggests that the lower survival rate among black patients is not solely because they are more often diagnosed with less treatable types of breast cancer, the researchers said.

The researchers found that black patients were less likely than white patients to be diagnosed with either the luminal A or luminal B breast cancer subtypes.

“African-Americans were more likely to have the hard-to-treat triple-negative breast cancer subtype and had a lower likelihood of having the luminal A subtype, which tends to be the most treatable subtype of breast cancer and has the best prognosis,” study author Candyce Kroenke, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente, said in an association news release.

Kroenke and her colleagues found, however, that lower survival among black patients was consistent across breast cancer subtypes. Black patients were 2.3 times more likely to die from the luminal A breast cancer subtype compared with white patients, 2.6 times more likely to die from the luminal B subtype, 1.3 times more likely to die from the basal-like subtype and 2.4 times more likely to die from the HER2-enriched subtype.

“African-Americans with breast cancer appeared to have a poorer prognosis regardless of subtype,” Kroenke said. “It seems from our data that the black/white breast cancer survival difference cannot be explained entirely by variable breast cancer subtype diagnosis.”

READ MORE: http://www.everydayhealth.com/breast-cancer/breast-cancer-death-rates-higher-for-black-women.aspx?xid=aol_rss

Health news Copyright @ 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

LISTEN NOW:  Serve Taste or Trash! Food Game podcast featuring Chef Robert Lewis aka ‘The Happy Diabetic’, author Ginger Vieira, Central Farm Market Co-founders, Deb Moser and Mitchell Berliner, ‘The Queen of Green’ Ms. Aida Romaine and Laura from Chattanooga, TN: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/divatalkradio1/2013/04/02/serve-taste-or-trash-game-2

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Serve, Taste or Trash! Food Game at Easter Parade in New York, NY

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No More Finger Pricking! ‘Under the Skin’ Blood Sugar Testing Device Coming Soon

Divabetic

Forget the pricks and pains of needles; blood testing may have just gotten a whole lot easier.

Scientists say they have developed a tiny blood-testing device that sits under the skin and gives instant results via a mobile phone.

The Swiss team say the wireless prototype – half an inch (14mm) long – can simultaneously check for up to five different substances in the blood.

The data is sent to the doctor using radiowaves and Bluetooth technology.

The device’s developers hope it will be available to patients within four years.

How exactly does it work? The sensory microchip is surgically implanted in the interstitial tissue, just beneath the skin, and the implant’s power source — two lithium batteries — is worn over the skin in an attachable patch.

“The chip is placed in the interstitial tissue and it comes in contact with fluids in the body,” Dr. Giovanni de Micheli, director of Integrated Systems Laboratory at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), said in an explanatory video (seen above). “The sensors react to the presence of particular compounds in these fluids, detect them and then send the measurements outside.”

Dr. Sandro Carrara, the lead EPFL researcher who also lectures at the university, said he imagines the microchip will eventually be implantable within a user’s legs or arms — as long as the device is embedded in a region where metabolites are released for it to work properly.

“For now, we are targeting the intestine region because it has been already demonstrated in literature that the concentration of metabolites — glucose, for example — in that region corresponds quite well to that in the blood,” Carrara told The Huffington Post.

Once implanted, the so-called “tiny laboratory” acquires data from five sensors on the microchip once every 10 minutes in a process called continuous monitoring. Updates are then sent via radio transmission to a patient or doctor, who can review the results on a mobile app accessible on a smartphone or other handheld device, such as an iPad.

READ MORE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21841829

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Burger King’s New Turkey Burger

Divabetic

Burger King will soon be offering turkey burgers!

The new sandwich is as part of its limited-time offers for spring, marking the latest fast-food effort to cater to health-conscious diners. Last week, McDonald’s said it plans to offer a lower-calorie version of its Egg McMuffin made with egg whites.

“Turkey burgers as a category is growing pretty rapidly in the restaurant space,” said Eric Hirschhorn, who heads global innovation for Burger King.

As with Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, Burger King said its turkey burger could be added to the permanent lineup if sales are strong enough.

Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s introduced turkey burgers in response to consumers in their 20s and 30s, who are more mindful about what they’re eating than past generations, said Brad Haley, chief marketing officer for CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the chains. At the same time, he noted that the turkey burgers – which come with toppings like guacamole and pepperjack cheese_ are successful because they’re still seen as indulgent and filling. In terms of nutritional content, he said the key was just to keep them under 500 calories.

Showing that the healthy glow isn’t strictly about calories, Burger King’s turkey burger clocks in at 530 calories, compared with 470 calories for its grilled chicken sandwich. A regular Whopper is 630 calories.

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NYC Seeks to Ban Cigarette Displays in Stores

Divabetic

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called for legislation to make New York the first U.S. city to require stores to conceal tobacco products, a week after a court struck down his ban on the sale of large sugary beverages.

Bloomberg’s latest health initiative would mandate that tobacco products such as cigarettes be kept in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in any other concealed location. It wouldn’t pertain to advertising, leading a spokesman for the state’s convenience stores to question its logic and effectiveness.

“New York City has dramatically lowered our smoking rate, but even one new smoker is one too many,” Bloomberg, 71, said at a press briefing today at a Queens hospital, according to a statement. “Young people are targets of marketing, and the availability of cigarettes and this legislation will help prevent another generation from the ill health and shorter life expectancy that comes with smoking.”

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Why Some Women Shouldn’t Eat Ice Cream

Women who have ever had breast cancer might want to walk away from the brie, the butter and the black cherry (and every other flavor) ice cream.

According to a study of 1,893 women, breast cancer survivors who average as little as one serving per day of high-fat dairy foods have a 49 percent higher risk of dying from breast cancer than those who eat little or no high-fat dairy.

In absolute terms, breast cancer survivors who consumed the most high-fat dairy had about a 12 percent risk of dying of the disease.

The elevated mortality risk is therefore “modest,” said lead author Candyce Kroenke, a staff scientist at Kaiser Permanente, the nonprofit healthcare provider. “But since it may not be so difficult to lower your consumption of high-fat dairy, I think if you have breast cancer it’s worthwhile.”

The research, published on Thursday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is notable because more than a dozen studies since the late 1980s have examined whether consuming milk, cheese, ice cream and other dairy products is related to breast cancer. The results have been a confusing muddle: Some studies found that women who eat a lot of dairy have a higher risk of breast cancer, others found they have a lower risk and still others found no effect either way.

The Kaiser study is the first to separate out the effects of high- and low-fat dairy on women diagnosed with breast cancer.

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Judge Halts New York City Soda Ban

Divabetic

A state judge on Monday stopped Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s administration from banning the sale of large sugary drinks at New York City restaurants and other venues, a major defeat for a mayor who has made public-health initiatives a cornerstone of his tenure.

The city is “enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations,” wrote New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling, blocking the rules one day before they would have taken effect. The city’s chief counsel, Michael Cardozo, pledged to quickly appeal the ruling.

In halting the drink rules, Judge Tingling noted that the incoming sugary drink regulations were “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences” that would be difficult to enforce with consistency “even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole.”

The city rules, set to take effect on March 12, didn’t include convenience stores, such as 7-Elevens, and supermarkets, both of which are regulated by the state government.

In his ruling, Judge Tingling found the Board of Health’s mission is to protect New Yorkers by providing regulations that protect against diseases. Those powers, he argued, don’t include the authority to “limit or ban a legal item under the guise of ‘controlling chronic disease.’ “

The board may supervise and regulate the city’s food supply when it affects public health, but the City Charter clearly outlines when such steps may be taken: According to Judge Tingling, the city must face imminent danger due to disease.

“That has not been demonstrated,” he wrote.

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Basics In Diabetes Pattern Management – Divabetic

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Researchers Cure Type 1 Diabetes In Dogs

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), led by Fàtima Bosch, have shown for the first time that it is possible to cure diabetes in large animals with a single session of gene therapy. As published this week in Diabetes, the principal journal for research on the disease, after a single gene therapy session, the dogs recover their health and no longer show symptoms of the disease. In some cases, monitoring continued for over four years, with no recurrence of symptoms.

The therapy is minimally invasive. It consists of a single session of various injections in the animal’s rear legs using simple needles that are commonly used in cosmetic treatments. These injections introduce gene therapy vectors, with a dual objective: to express the insulin gene, on the one hand, and that of glucokinase, on the other. Glucokinase is an enzyme that regulates the uptake of glucose from the blood. When both genes act simultaneously they function as a “glucose sensor”, which automatically regulates the uptake of glucose from the blood, thus reducing diabetic hyperglycemia (the excess of blood sugar associated with the disease).

As Fàtima Bosch, the head researcher, points out, “this study is the first to demonstrate a long-term cure for diabetes in a large animal model using gene therapy.”

This same research group had already tested this type of therapy on mice, but the excellent results obtained for the first time with large animals lays the foundations for the clinical translation of this gene therapy approach to veterinary medicine and eventually to diabetic patients.

The study was led by the head of the UAB’s Centre for Animal Biotechnology and Gene Therapy (CBATEG) Fàtima Bosch, and involved the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the UAB, the Department of Medicine and Animal Surgery of the UAB, the Faculty of Veterinary Science of the UAB, the Department of Animal Health and Anatomy of the UAB, the Spanish Biomedical Research Centre in Diabetes and Associated Metabolic Disorders (CIBERDEM), the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (USA) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Philadelphia (USA).

READ MORE: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/uadb-urc020713.php

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Let’s Talk About Sex!  Here’s a sneak peak of  Divabetic’s upcoming ‘Love On A Two Way Street’ free outreach program focused on ‘Sexual Health & Diabetes’ and presented at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital on Sat., Feb, 9, 2013

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Basics In Diabetes Pattern Management – Divabetic:

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