Gambling with addiction: dangerous beliefs about smoking and diabetes

Smoking among people with diabetes parallels that of the general population. However, compared to non-smokers with diabetes, people with diabetes who smoke have twice the risk of premature death. The risk of complications associated with tobacco use and diabetes in combination are nearly 14 times higher than the risk

Blood fats: a toxic meal-time tide


Time to stop - for good

Editor-in-chief's editorial

Learning to do the right thing

President's editorial

Foods and their effects on blood sugar

Until the discovery of insulin in the 1920’s, dietary modification offered the only means of reducing raised blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. Now a wide variety of sophisticated insulin regimes are available; and for people with Type 2 diabetes, there is a range of oral medication. However, there is increasing appreciation that appropriate food selection remains a cornerstone of diabetes management. While it is important to remember that the way in which

The history of diabetes nutrition therapy: from starvation to evidence-based recommendations

“For forty-eight hours after admission to the hospital the patient is kept on an ordinary diet, to determine the severity of his diabetes. Then he is starved, and no food allowed save whiskey and black coffee. The whiskey is given in the coffee: 1 ounce of whiskey every two hours, from 7am until 7pm. The whiskey is not an essential part of treatment; it merely furnishes a few calories and keeps the patient more comfortable while he is being starved.” Starvation (Allen) Treatment of Diabetes (1915).

Designer insulins and meal-time blood glucose control

After the discovery of insulin in the 1920´s, available insulin was from natural sources (animal pancreas) until human insulin was made available in the early 1980s. None of these insulins was ideal for injection under the skin. Now, new

The nutrition transition and the global shift towards obesity

Populations worldwide are becoming more corpulent. The levels of overweight and obesity in many low- to middle-income countries such as Mexico, Egypt, and South Africa rival that of the country used as the benchmark for this problem, the USA. Moreover, the rates of increase in obesity in these countries are double to quadruple those in the USA. In this article, Barry Popkin reports on the impact of important shifts in nutritional patterns and the trend towards inactivity.

Meal-time glucose control: the role of oral drugs

As a species, our condition has changed: from prolonged periods of fasting and occasional gorging, to nearly constant feeding with rarely occurring periods of fasting. The constant availability of ‘grazing opportunities’ has contributed to a change in the body build of humans towards increasing body weight, overweight, and obesity. With this change has come a massive increase in the number of people with diabetes and diabetes- and- obesity-related health problems.

A cultural approach to diabetes therapy in the Middle East

The Middle East comprises countries such as Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Autonomous Territories and Syria, and contains several ethnic and religious groups. Moslem Arabs, however, are, by far, the largest population group and they form the dominant culture. Certain values belonging to this culture serve to make acceptance of diabetes nutritional therapy difficult. Nevertheless, it cannot be ignored that people with diabetes in the Middle East have to survive and try to be an accepted part of the society in which they live.