In case you haven’t been following the case going all around the internet, Doug Burns (Mr. Universe) was being sued after being maced and arrested for having a hypoglycemic episode a month or two ago.

But as Diabetes mine reports, the charges against Mr. Burns are being dropped.

There has been a great backing and support of the diabetic community to help get Doug through this and stand up for what is right. I think it factored in big time here, we really can make a difference.

This is a great thing for many reasons. For one, as many have pointed out, this could have been ANY of us, not just the high profile Mr. Universe. Also, more people need to be educated and exposed to the issues and situation that can occur regarding diabetes and have an overall sense of compassion and understanding for those of us who have to deal with it daily. In the end, a little understanding and compassion goes a long way.

The high cost of diabetes

Via http://www.sugarstats.com/

“Nearly 3 out of 5 of the 18 million Americans with Type 2 diabetes suffer from at least one serious health complication such as heart attack or chronic kidney disease, according to a new study. Taken together, complications from the disease accounted for an estimated $22.9 billion in medical spending in 2006; annual health care costs per person were nearly $10,000, almost three times higher than for non diabetics.”

Find out about the sugar in your food

Via http://healthwealth.wordpress.com/

“Almost any food we eat may contain sugar. Even those with marketing ads saying the product is sugar free…may actually mean “no added table sugar” BUT contains other sources of sugar hidden under a different name so BE AWARE!

It is important to remember that sugar can come in many forms. You may think you are eating sugar free foods but hidden in the ingredients are the likeness of sugar that can still contribute to calories.”

Lifestyle changes for Type-2 Diabetics

Via http://www.rocklintoday.com/

“Type 2 diabetes (T2D), now epidemic in the United States, is a national tragedy, as 1 in 3 Americans – born in the 21st century – are expected to become diabetic, even young children.

I call it tragic because more than 90% of T2D cases are preventable – with fairly simple changes in lifestyle. Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, non-traumatic limb amputation, and nerve damage. Diabetes increases the likelihood of stroke and heart disease by 2-4 times; Alzheimer’s disease is 60% more likely. There is no end to diabetes complications.”

FDA clears the New FreeStyle Lite

Via http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/

“Abbott Diabetes Care announced today the launch of its FreeStyle Lite™ blood glucose monitoring system for people with diabetes after receiving a 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The new FreeStyle Lite system has an innovative automatic calibration feature that eliminates the manual coding step usually required by most blood glucose meters before starting a new vial of test strips. The easy-to-use FreeStyle Lite meter allows people with diabetes to test quickly and more easily.”

Depression may trigger diabetes in older adults

Via http://www.eurekalert.org/

“Chronic depression or depression that worsens over time may cause diabetes in older adults, according to new Northwestern University research.

This is the first national study to suggest that depression alone—and not lifestyle factors like being overweight –can trigger Type 2 diabetes in adults 65 and older, a population with a high prevalence of diabetes and depression. The report will be published April 23 in Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study examined 4,681 men and women 65 and older from Forsyth County, N.C.; Sacramento County, Calif.; Washington County, Md.; and Pittsburgh, Pa., annually for 10 years.”

Scientists identify 7 diabetic genes

http://www.nytimes.com/ NYTimes Login Required

One of the main things when sharing info is having different mediums to do it with. We’ve always had printing of pages in SugarStats to compliment sharing your stats with others via TrustedVue, now we’ve made it much better.

Via Print CSS we’ve streamlined and designed the new prints to cut out as much white space as possible while still getting the stats you need there in a clear and easy to read manner.

All the elements of the webpage that don’t need to be printed disappear (such as the sidebar and headers). You can simply print any page as it is and get a clean and clear print.

You can take a look for yourself, just make a print! If you want to save ink you can also do a “Print Preview” directly from your browser (via the file menu and print boxes) to see it.

We’ve just send out invites to a few more hundred of you who signed up to the mailing list. We just wanted to give a big thanks to you all and hope you get as much out of SugarStats as we do.

Of course all of your feedback (good or bad) is welcome, we’re always working to make the system better. Feel free to join the forum: forum.sugarstats.com or email us at support@sugarstats.com

If you just found us or just signed up to the mailinglist don’t fear, we’re still collecting emails and when we’re ready we’ll send out more invites. Stay tuned!!

TrustedVue

We’re introducing TrustedVue today, a feature that allows you to share your statistics with your family, friends, doctor or whoever you wish.

Sharing your statistics and progress is just as important as keeping track of them, especially in regards to your health-care professional.

How it works

With TrustedVue you create accounts for the people you trust to view your information. They will then be notified via email and be able to login. Simply click on the main “Lists & Settings” tab and in the subnavigation you’ll see a new “TrustedVue Login List” link.

The cool thing (we think ) is that when they login, they will be able to view and interact within SugarStats just as you do but in a “read-only” mode. Which means they won’t be able to add, edit or delete anything.

How it looks for you

How it looks for a TrustedVue account

TrustedVue Messaging

We’ve also added basis (emphasis on basic… For now ) messaging between you and the people you let view your account. This is a private, one-to-one communication. Meaning you will see all the messages between various TrustedVue accounts but they will only be able to see messages sent to you by them or sent to them by you.

You can start a new message in the message tab, or you can relate a message to a specific day (we’re adding message related to specific timeframes soon) by creating the message on a specific day (at the bottom of the day page.)

Messaging Permissions
Permissions are simple: You get to edit/delete any message you like and TrustedVue accounts under you can only edit/delete those created by them. It’s no GMail and wasn’t meant to be, but its simple and we want to keep it that way .

Blood Glucose Meter Export Uploads

Everyday you use your glucose meter, it is vital to your health at this point. This meter is also where a large chunk of your glucose reading past is held, wouldn’t it be great to get that into sugarstats for analysis?

One of the new features we’re rolling out to our BETA testers is meter reading uploads. This has been a very popular request and we’ve been trying to get something in the works for everyone to try.

We’ve started with OneTouch as they are one of the biggest in the glucose meter industry and since their software makes it easy to export your glucose readings to a file.

How will it work?

This feature has less to do with the actual OneTouch meter you use and more about the OneTouch Diabetes Management Software that comes with the meter.

In case you don’t know about this, you can find all the info about it here: OneTouch Diabetes Management Software

Also, in order to connect the meter to your computer (Unfortunately it is Windows/PC only at the moment) you’ll need to get the USB or Serial connector cable which you can get from OneTouch or another source.

Once you have the software setup and the meter working with it, your readings should be in sync with the OneTouch software. To get this into SugarStats, you simply export your readings in .CSV format to a file on your desktop. It is this file you can upload to SugarStats and get all your past sugar readings in.

Supported OneTouch Meters

Unfortunately, not ever glucose meter manufacturer uses the same software or exports in the same format for that matter. So we need to go through each one, one at a time, to see if it is possible to extract from their export files. We’re lucky OneTouch made this easy.

According to OneTouch:

“All OneTouch® Meters with data ports are compatible with v2.3.1”

All OneTouch meters that are supported by the OneTouch Diabetes Management Software version 2.3.1 and above is supported. So our only requirement is that you have the latest update of the OneTouch Diabetes Management Software.

Future Meter Support (or if you’re meter isn’t supported)

We’d love to continue adding support for more meters, this just takes development time. If you’re meter isn’t supported and would like to help, feel free to send us an email with the details and attach an export from your meter software. Send it to support at sugarstats.com

Glucose Readings on the Go

This feature we’ve been wanting ourselves for quite some time and we finally have something to show you guys.

I think this will make it much more “convenient” to input your readings and better fit management into your lifestyle. For example, how many times have you been out and about, out to eat or even not next to your computer and wanted to record a reading? Now things are a bit easier.

How will it work?

We tried to blend this feature in with the overall SugarStats theme regarding ease of use, so this feature is pretty simple and seamless to use.

On your settings page you’ll see a new field which has a personalized email address just for you (keep it secret). Simply add this to your address book in your email app and mobile phone, when you want to add a reading, simply input it into the body field and send! You can leave everything else blank.

There are a few different ways you could do this:

1. Via your standard mail client (Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail/Yahoo!/MSN etc)
2. Via your email/internet enabled PDA/Phone/Mobile Device
3. On some mobile phones you’re able to send an SMS to an email address, this comes in quite handy.

This way you don’t have to login or keep a SugarStats window open on your browser if all you want to do is insert a single reading. The reading will have its date and time set to when you sent it in, you can of course change this later if you like.

You also have the option of changing the email address, you can do this on your settings page. We know it could be even better and we’re working on it (see below). Send any feedback to support@sugarstats.com

In store for the future

What we want to get running is a straight SMS to SugarStats feature, though this requires SMS gateways and all sorts of other funky jazz to work. But we hope to have it in the future where you can SMS from your cell phone to a standard number to get your readings in.