How the Mediterranean Diet Alone Can Fight Diabetes

[longknife]

By Alexandra Sifferlin @acsifferlinJan. 06, 2014

Image Source / Getty Images

There is no ultimate diet, but if there were, the Mediterranean plan would come darn close.

Featuring staples like olive oil, nuts and vegetables, the Mediterranean diet has been heralded as a game changer for health and longevity. Countless studies have connected the eating plan to lower risks of heart attack and stroke and some have suggested the diet can even slow or prevent memory loss. Researchers speculate that the protective benefits likely stem from the combined effect of the diet’s healthy fats and nutrients.

Read more: Mediterranean Diet Alone Lowers Risk of Diabetes, Research Says | TIME.com Mediterranean Diet Alone Lowers Risk of Diabetes, Research Says | TIME.com

The “low in red and processed meats” is what truly turns me off. Now, I eat my share of chicken and pork, but doing away with my steaks is just a bit much. I do note it is also a low-carb diet, another thing I have problems with.

 

[waltky]

Good news for babies with weak kidneys...

Doctors design mini dialysis machine for babies
23 May`14 — Doctors in Italy have designed a miniature dialysis machine for babies, used for the first time last year to save a newborn girl, according to a new report.

Usually, doctors adapt standard dialysis machines for babies, but that can be risky since the devices can't always be accurately tweaked. About 1 to 2 percent of hospitalized infants have kidney problems that may require dialysis, which cleans toxins from the blood when the kidneys aren't working. "Only a small number of (babies) need this treatment, but it could be life-saving," said Dr. Heather Lambert, a pediatric kidney specialist and spokeswoman for Britain's Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Lambert and colleagues at the Great North Children's Hospital in Newcastle are working on a similar small dialysis device and other scientists have experimented with prototypes.

The new mini-dialysis machine, meant for babies under 10 kilograms (22 pounds), was conceived by Dr. Claudio Ronco of the San Bortolo Hospital in Vicenza, Italy and colleagues. Just weeks after the machine was licensed last summer by European authorities, they got their first patient: a 3-day-old baby girl weighing about 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) with multiple organ failure. "Her parents had already reserved the funeral," Ronco said. Instead, the baby was treated for nearly a month. She and her parents recently paid Ronco a visit. "The baby was crying like crazy because she was hungry, but she's doing great," Ronco said. The baby has mild kidney problems and needs vitamin D supplements but is otherwise growing normally, he said. Since then, about 10 other babies have been treated with the machine across Europe.

The development of the dialysis machine and its first patient were described in a paper published online Thursday in the journal Lancet. The research was paid for by an Italian kidney advocacy group. The dialysis machines cost 35,000 euros ($47,801) and Ronco does not profit from their sales. "This is a pretty major advance for the smallest infants," said Dr. Bethany Foster, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Montreal Children's Hospital in Canada, who co-authored an accompanying commentary. "I can't imagine the baby they (treated) would have survived with the current technology." Foster emphasized that doctors should be cautious in deciding which babies to treat. "You have to be especially vigilant with very small babies because what you're often doing amounts to heroic treatment," Foster said. "We need to be careful that we don't just do things because we can."

Doctors design mini dialysis machine for babies

 

[Disir]

Do you like Mediterranean food? There's 15 countries that fall under the category. This is the perfect time of year for it too. I think the only thing that I don't like are chickpeas. I'll only eat them as falafel or hummus. No little balls of yuck in soups or salads though. I don't like tarama salata or squid. But, those are specialty items as it is.

 

[waltky]

Indian diabetes on the rise...

A wealthier India sees alarming rise in adolescent diabetes
Thursday 1st June, 2017 - Rohin Sarin is midway through his 9th grade geography class when he starts feeling light-headed and dizzy, a sign that his blood sugar levels are dipping. He quietly removes his insulin pen from his school bag, gives himself one of four daily jabs and takes a bite of an energy bar.

The 15-year-old's classmates in New Delhi have seen the ritual so often they are no longer curious. Rohin is one of a growing number of Indians with diabetes, the disease increasingly afflicting children and adolescents in the fast-growing South Asian country. More than two decades of rapid economic growth has changed Indians' lifestyles. People eat out more often, and prefer Western-style junk food such as burgers and pizza over traditional lentil and vegetable meals. They are also more sedentary, using cars and public transportation instead of walking or riding bicycles, and entertaining themselves with television.

The changes have brought a sharp rise in obesity, along with lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, even as India still has some of the world's worst levels of malnourishment and stunted childhood growth due to a paucity of food. "Over the last 20 years, we are seeing a huge explosion ... mainly because of increasing childhood obesity," said Dr. Monica Arora, a specialist with the Public Health Foundation of India. Nearly 30 percent of India's teenagers are obese, nearly twice the number in 2010, according to health ministry statistics. India has 70 million diabetics, though it has no data on how many are children and likely has millions more cases that haven't been diagnosed due to spotty public health facilities and a lack of awareness outside big cities.

Health experts warn that India is on track to reach 120 million cases, or nearly 10 percent of the population, in the next eight years. That would put it on par with the United States, which counts 9.3 percent of the population as diabetic, or China, where 11 percent of the population — or 109 million — have been diagnosed, according to the International Diabetes Federation. Alarmed by the trend, the government is working to screen 500 million people aged 30 and older for diabetes and other non-communicable diseases by 2019, and eventually hopes to roll out the screening program to the entire 1.3 billion population. Authorities are also working with schools to "catch children in the pre-diabetic stage," Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda said recently.

An Indian family enters a fast food restaurant in New Delhi, India​

Medical research suggests Indians are genetically more susceptible to developing diabetes, thanks to a tendency to put on weight around the belly, Arora said. Most patients come from wealthier families and live in urban areas. India's countryside villages, meanwhile, are home to one of every five malnourished children in the world. "When you consider the long-term costs of the disease, it is an extremely worrisome prospect," Arora said. Most of India's diabetes cases are Type 2, often occurring when extra weight limits the body's ability to produce or use insulin to turn food into energy. By comparison, Type 1 diabetes is a natural inability to produce insulin.

Health experts are most worried about young people developing Type 2, which is also known as adult-onset diabetes. The disease requires a lifetime of attention to diet and exercise and access to proper medical treatment, without which diabetics are at risk of blindness, limb amputations, heart or kidney failure and stroke. They have advised healthier diets, even for Indians sticking with traditional cuisine. That may mean less of the starchy rice and flatbread now dominating Indians' dinner plates. And no more adding oil and butter to richen long-favored curried vegetables. And finding substitutes for the syrupy, fried sweets popular on special occasions from official holidays to the birth of a child or a new car purchase.

MORE

 

[badger2]

"They have forgotten the Asphodel."
(Corsican saying)