what they don't say (enough)

Are there "gaps" in what you hear and read about diabetes? An online survey for people affected by the disease(s) is gathering "missing" information to incorporate into educational videos.*

Distortions and omissions in the diabetes discourse are a recurring theme here - usually how:

• Medical research is dominated and distorted by deep-pocketed industrial interests.
• Standards for self care and even for diagnosis are shockingly - it is no exaggeration to say fatally - inadequate.

My top-of-mind short list for the biggest diabetes information gaps includes: 

• Diabetes is complicated. Volumes of research produce inconclusive and contradictory results.
• Diabetes-related research may be badly reported, or just plain bad.
• Evaluating research, assessing risks and benefits, and devising a working strategy for self care are not helped by the cognitive deficits, depression, and fatigue associated with blood sugar highs and lows.
• Drugs used to treat diabetes and/or its comorbidities may increase the risk of death or morbidity, including onset of diabetes itself and incidence of comorbidities. 
• Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and Pacific Islanders are known to be at higher risk for developing diabetes. Less discussed are the risks conferred by a range of circumstances: socioeconomic status, stress, sleep, inadequate health literacy and education, location, and exposure to plastics and to environmental pollution. These factors often trump genetics; they can increase diabetes incidence and/or worsen outcomes.
• Lack of professional consensus, balky insurance plans, and physicians' disregard of patient-reported data may all interfere with getting adequate testing supplies to carry out tight glucose control.

In short, diabetes usually cannot be resolved by, as one pharmaceutical company shamelessly touts, "simple changes."

Of course, those of us with type 2 diabetes have it "easy." Those with type 1 can match all of the above point for point (with some variation) besides being burdened with:

• fewer treatment options 
• a more painstaking, invasive, and wearying—and typically decades longer—self-care routine
• immediate and potentially mortal risks that can come from monitoring and treatment errors

Cheery thoughts for a sunny winter's day! Well, they asked.

Good heath and good luck,

M.

*The survey is sponsored by wegohealth, a platform for online "health activists"; they will donate to diabetes organizations based on survey participation to promote the survey. I don't know much about the sponsors, but they are asking the right questions.

normal? really?

Here's a secret. When it comes to blood glucose levels, nobody knows what "normal" means.

As noted before, medical research finds increased incidence and risk of diabetic comorbidities or "complications" (late-stage symptoms) correlating with blood sugar levels currently deemed "pre-diabetic" or even normal.

We know this more precisely now, yet it's nothing new. The correlation of elevated blood glucose with morbidity and mortality is long-established; it informs our current definition of normal as fasting blood glucose under 100 mg/dL, although in an entirely inadequate way.

As long ago as 1980, impaired glucose tolerance (defined as blood sugar levels of 96 mg/dL or greater after a clinically-administered "challenge" of 50 g oral glucose), roughly doubled risk of death due to coronary heart disease.

In short, that level of post-challenge glucose intolerance, several points within today's "normal" fasting range, kills people. Quibbling over the additional 25 mg/dL that distinguish the "pre-diabetic" from the diabetic seems as useful as speculating over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

more on the risks of current norms

p.s. I was recently surprised to find an untapped prescription for glucose test strips, and was able to get it extended. I'm gathering new data on my own progress and setbacks, and should be able to publish them soon. I shall also finally incorporate into the data the standards for normoglycemia that have been tightened - obviously to my mind not enough - since my original intervention in 2003.

eye risk before diagnosis

A recent study proposes new thresholds for predicting risk of diabetic retinopathy. Using more precise gradation in the "good control" or "prediabetic" range than comparable earlier research, Massin et al. found the following correlations among 700 French volunteers studied for ten years, and were confident in proposing them as predictive:

HbA1c %	fasting plasma glucose mg/dL	predicted retinopathy
6.0	—	6.0%
—	108	8.4%
—	116	14.0%
6.5	—	14.8%

The takeaway? A difference in the range of half a percentage point of HbA1c, or 8 mg/dL of fasting plasma glucose, roughly doubles one's risk of potentially blinding retinopathy, from about one in 15 to one in 7. This risk correlation held even among subjects who did not develop diabetes, as currently defined, over the course of the study, retaining their diagnosis of "impaired fasting glucose".
The current diagnostic threshold for diabetes is an HbA1c of 6.5, the highest value in the proposed predictive model. Since the diagnostic threshold in terms of fasting blood glucose is 126 mg/dL, the remaining values are well below the threshold, in the so-called "prediabetic" range. Normoglycemic, neither diabetic nor prediabetic, is currently defined (at the upper end) as under 100 mg/dL fasting glucose or under 5.7% HbA1c.
I have two reasons for highlighting this study:

• Absent a risk of going hypoglycemic—into dangerously low blood glucose levels—there is a compelling argument for driving blood glucose levels down even if you are being told, as people in the "prediabetic" range often are, that they have "good control". A level of control that may double my risk of blindness doesn't seem to me to have much good about it. (Type 1 diabetics or others considered to be at higher risk for "going hypo" may want to check with their care team about the extent to which tight control might mitigate both short- and long-term risks.)
• If diabetes is a progressive, degenerative, debilitating, and potentially fatal disease with multiple comorbidities—it is—and if "prediabetes" is an independent mortality risk whose defining numbers successfully predict so-called "complications", or more precisely late-stage symptoms, of diabetes—it is and they do—why on Earth is the diabetic establishment still sugar-coating the reality of this disease by mucking around with terms like "prediabetes"? When will medicine catch up with science and lower the diagnostic threshold? It has done so before, and can do so again. Come the day!

source: Massin P et al. Archives of Ophthalmology, 2011: 129(2): 188-195