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‘SHE’S NOW OR NEVER’ FOUNDER MENNE TALIVA’A HALL RUNS IN NORTH SHORE MARATHON (Honolulu, HAWAI'I)--She’s running to fight obesity, diabetes and heart disease. She’s running for her family. “I run for change!” exclaims Menne Taliva’a Hall, founder of a health and wellness sisterhood and Blog called ‘She’s Now or Never’ or SNN. "My quest to run marathons is a demonstration to prove that change is possible! I leave footprints in honor of family and friends that have passed on and for those that I love dearly." After shedding 150 pounds and finishing more than 20 half-marathons, Hall – blogger and...

A new diabetes drug that hit the market in the past week boasts it can drop your glucose levels and flush out "guilty" calories every time you use the bathroom. Experts say that every time the patient urinates, out goes all the unwanted sugar and calories. Doctors say this drug could even help prevent Type 2 diabetes. KVUE's sister station KENS went behind closed doors at the Veterans Affairs hospital to witness clinical trials for other drugs similar to Invokana. Last Friday, the FDA approved Invokana, a drug experts are hailing as a game changer for Type 2 diabetes treatment....

Did you know that consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the U.S. -- which can be found in a plethora of cookies, candies and fast-foods -- has increased by a a whopping 10,673 percent between 1970 and 2005? So reports the USDA Dietary Assessment of Major Trends in U.S. Food Consumption report. Are you one of millions, who, according to the USDA report, consume one-quarter of your calories from added sugars, most of which comes from high fructose corn syrup, as mercola.com pointed out? Meanwhile, have you heard about the a recent study, which reveals that a diet...

Though theories abound, scientists still don't understand what is causing the rise in type 1 diabetes in children worldwide. The incidence of type 1 diabetes in children is on the rise worldwide, with the number of new cases growing by an average of 3% per year in youth under age 15. The reasons for the sharp increase remain a medical mystery, since researchers have not been able to identify the changing conditions that are causing more kids to be diagnosed in recent decades. A new study presented this week at the annual Society for Endocrinology conference may help shed more light...

U. MISSOURI (US) — Vitamin D supplements can help obese children and teens control their blood-sugar levels, which may help lower their risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.“By increasing vitamin D intake alone, we got a response that was nearly as powerful as what we have seen using a prescription drug,” says Catherine Peterson, associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri. “We saw a decrease in insulin levels, which means better glucose control, despite no changes in body weight, dietary intake, or physical activity.”For the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers...

Enlarge Image Microbe overhaul. Gastric bypass surgery changes the community of microbes in the gut, and a study suggests the new population might drive weight loss. Credit: Life in View/Science Source Usually, science starts in the lab and then moves to patients. Gastric bypass surgery has taken the opposite path. Originally offered as a radical treatment for severe obesity, the surgery's effects on the digestive system and metabolism have turned out to be far more mysterious and fascinating than anyone expected. Now, a new study probes another of the surgery's effects: its impact on microbes in the gut and...

Diabetes is a detrimental disease. In order to combat the illness, University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers conducted a study with an industry partner and discovered that stem cells can reverse Type 1 diabetes in mice. The discovery leads the way for the development of innovative treatments of diabetes, which is caused by deficient production of insulin by the pancreas. Insulin allows glucose to be held by the bodyÂ’s muscle, fat, and liver; in turn, itÂ’s used as fuel for the body. Blindness, heart attack, kidney failure, nerve damage, and stroke are possible consequences of low insulin production. The research...

This week I gasped in horror when I learned that Obama care had ordered Medicare to cut reimbursement for 4 million diabetic seniors by 66%. It also reduced all the companies that were supplying blood sugar monitoring supplies from 1000 to 15. I also learned via the research of Elizabeth Vliet M.D. that one of her 80 year old patients was told he was not covered anymore by Medicare when he went to the pharmacy so couldn’t get his medication. His choice was to pay cash or die. Pause for a second and snap out of being mildly annoyed and...

Like the sun, insulin levels rise and fall in a daily rhythm. Disrupting that cycle may contribute to obesity and diabetes, a new study suggests. Many body systems follow a daily clock known as a circadian rhythm. Body temperature, blood pressure and the release of many hormones are on circadian timers. But until now, no one had shown that insulin — a hormone that helps control how the body uses sugars for energy — also has a daily cycle. Working with mice, researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville have found that rodents are more sensitive to insulin’s effects at certain...

Diets lean on meat and rich in healthy fats like olive oil were most effective at promoting weight loss and lowering blood sugar among people with diabetes in a review of evidence from the last 10 years. Benefits were also seen with diets low in carbohydrates, high in protein or low in simple sugars. "If you look at different types of diets, these four can improve various aspects of diabetes control," lead author Dr. Olubukola Ajala, a diabetes specialist at Western Sussex Hospitals in the UK, told Reuters Health. More than 24 million Americans have type 2 diabetes. People with...

The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued the first-ever guidelines for the management of type 2 diabetes in children and teens. Type 2 diabetes is rising rapidly among children and teens because of soaring obesity rates. It now accounts for up to 1 in 3 new cases of diabetes in those younger than 18. These guidelines are for children between the ages of 10 and 18. "Few providers have been trained in managing type 2 diabetes in children and, to date, few medications have been evaluated for safety and [effectiveness] in children," says co-author Janet Silverstein, MD, professor of pediatrics...

A federal magistrate judge has ordered State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes to answer questions about how troopers are trained to recognize and respond to people suffering from diabetic shock, a serious condition caused by extremely low blood sugar. In 2011, Daniel Fried, 47, of Pennsylvania, sued two troopers claiming that, a year earlier, they failed to recognize he was suffering from shock on the side of the road, wrestled him to the ground, struck him with a baton, arrested him and denied him the juice he requested from his van. The first trooper to arrive said in court documents...

When cars had metallic bumpers, sodas were used to polish them, and popular acidic soft drinks has also been known to be a good toilet-bowl cleaner. Now, Greek gastroentrologists headed by Dr. Spiros Ladas at Athens University Medical School and Laikon Hospital have published a study proving that drinking Coca-Cola (the brand name provided in the article) can open up clogs in people with overly convoluted gastrointestinal systems caused by the ingestion of digested fruits and vegetables. They published their findings on Monday in the journal Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

A study led by researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has found a correlation between vitamin D3 serum levels and subsequent incidence of Type 1 diabetes. The six-year study of blood levels of nearly 2,000 individuals suggests a preventive role for vitamin D3 in this disease. The research appears the December issue of Diabetologia, a publication of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). "Previous studies proposed the existence of an association between vitamin D deficiency and risk of and Type 1 diabetes, but this is the first time that the theory has...

PORT ST. LUCIE — Liberty Medical Supplies announced Tuesday plans in two months to lay off 250 employees from its Port St. Lucie location after the company's new owners opted to exit the Medicare fee-for-service business in early 2013. Employees will be given severance packages depending on their positions, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Frank Harvey said. Some of the company's outgoing business will turn over to Coral Springs-based Arriva Medical. Harvey said Arriva Medical probably will hire several hundred employees from Liberty Medical for at least six months. Liberty Medical also announced the company will layoff 200 employees at...

Thousand of epigenetic switches in the liver control whether genes turn on or off in response to circadian cycles. The figure illustrates daily changes, every six hours, in five different...When it's dark, and we start to fall asleep, most of us think we're tired because our bodies need rest. Yet circadian rhythms affect our bodies not just on a global scale, but at the level of individual organs, and even genes. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have determined the specific genetic switches that sync liver activity to the circadian cycle. Their finding gives further insight into the mechanisms behind...

The energy in–energy out hypothesis is not set in stone, argues Gary Taubes. It is time to test hormonal theories about why we get fat. “It is better to know nothing,” wrote French physiologist Claude Bernard in An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865), “than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek.” Embracing a fixed idea is one of the main dangers in the evolution of any scientific discipline. Ideally, errors will be uncovered in the trial-by-fire of rigorous testing and the science will right itself. In rare cases, however, an...

While the dominating opinion is that rising insulin is a result of obesity and insulin resistance, a new study provides evidence that it appears to be the other way around.

People with diabetes face the possibility of a number of serious complications, including poor wound healing. Now a new study has found that application of a topical statin drug speeds up wound healing in mice with diabetes.Could a statin drug help diabetic wound healing? Diabetes has several characteristics that make recovering from wounds more challenging. For example, people with diabetes have a weakened immune system, which makes healing more problematic. Nerve damage (neuropathy), which is common in diabetes, can make individuals unable to feel the pain associated with a cut or blister until it becomes infected. Diabetes is also...

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation. The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely...