We’ll be at the Health 2.0 Conference on September 20th in San Fran, if you’re also going we’d love to meet you.

It will definitely be a jam-packed day, there is plenty on the agenda. If you’ll be at the conference or in the area and would like to get together feel free to drop an email to: info@sugarstats.com

Surprised? Hardly…

“A new study released Thursday suggests sodas sweetened with high fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of diabetes. The study from researchers at Rutgers University, shows sodas sweetened with high fructose corn syrup contain high levels of compounds that previous research suggests may play a role in the development of diabetes. Especially when consumed in large amounts.”

Make sure to digg the story:
http://digg.com/health/Study_Links_Diabetes_and_High_Fructose_Corn_Syrup_Found_in_Soda

It is not often that diabetes gets so much attention in Digg.

To discuss, visit TuDiabetes.com: http://tudiabetes.com/forum/topic/show?id=583967%3ATopic%3A34478

The New York Times has posted a very interesting 4-page article I think is worth takin a look at. It goes into the dangers of neglecting the other important factors for surviving diabetes, such as cholesterol.

They showcase a story of a man who was only concerned with his glucose levels and pretty much neglected everything else but ended up paying the price with a stroke. There is also a video up.

“Nearly 73,000 Americans die from diabetes annually, more than from any disease except heart disease, cancer, stroke and pulmonary disease.

Yet, largely because of a misunderstanding of the proper treatment, most patients are not doing even close to what they should to protect themselves. In fact, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 7 percent are getting all the treatments they need.”

Take a look: Looking Past Blood Sugar to Survive with Diabetes

Twitter Integration

We’re happy to announce Twitter.com integration with SugarStats! Now you can quickly add sugar and med entries via Twitter direct message to our ss1 Twitter account.

The great thing about this is now you also have the ability to choose from the monstrous array of 3rd party twitter apps on top of Web, IM, SMS for inputting entries into SugarStats.

Now you can just send a Twitter message like this:

Then an entry of 108 goes directly into your SugarStats account at the date and time of the message; Comment optional.

If you want to share your sugar info with your Twitter circle you can enable the option within SugarStats to have new entries posted to your Twitter account. This is just the beginning and we’ll be improving it as time goes on, including adding events/tags.

For all the details and instructions check out our Twitter input help page

What is Twitter?

Twitter.com is the wildly popular micro-blogging service which allows people to answer one question very easily: “What are you doing?” in less then 140 characters. It is a great way to keep in contact with friends, family and also find out what other people are up to via Web, IM, SMS and Desktop applications.

For more info on Twitter go to Twitter.com and Twitter.com/faq

We’ll be rolling out a few small features soon. Here are a few notables:

• Added calendar based date selection in the sidebar
• Today and Yesterday links will always take you there based on your timezone
• Messaging has been slightly tweaked for quicker reading and replying
• Added carb averages per meal per day for premium users
• More intuitive date labeling for multi-day statistics
• dozens of other small bug fixes

Twitter.com and SugarStats.com Integration!

Another cool thing is Twitter integration, now you can input sugar and med entries directly from Twitter via the twitter website, SMS, IM, within Firefox and all the other great 3rd party Twitter utilities. Find the full details on our Twitter help page.

Email Input Format Modification

An important thing to mention is we’ve standardized the input format quite a bit so now inputting via Twitter and Email takes exactly the same format. Before you had a separate med email you had to specifically send mail to, now you just have one but you have to slightly modify the format of the entry.

Learn more on our email Input help page

The folks down at Adaptive Path, a design firm in San Francisco, have posted details, video’s and sketches of a concept device for better diabetes management called Charmr.

It was initially in response to the challenged posted by Amy Tenderich of DiabetesMine.com as an open letter to Steve Jobs of Apple to put effort into making a diabetes management device as easy to use and as sleek as say an iPod.

Though as more diabetes management devices do come out, I think it is very important they keep open data formats in mind to allow open-exchange of the data into/from various diabetes management systems.

I know it makes things so much easier for us to integrate devices and systems that put a little thought in this area. We would love to integrate a device like this into SugarStats and really put together a complete system.

You can get more details on the Charmr concept here:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog

Here is their concept video:

Recently diagnosed? A veteran? Type 1’s and type 2’s of the world:

Share with other diabetics: How many years have you had diabetes?

Debunking the myths of parenting with diabetes

Kathryn Gregorio Palmer knows diabetes. She has lived with it since age 18. Her husband also has type 1 diabetes and they have two healthy young boys. So, when you read so much about the risks of parenting among diabetics, you can’t help but think they may be on to something that all of us diabetics can learn from.

In writing When You’re a Parent With Diabetes: A Real Life Guide to Staying Healthy While Raising a Family Palmer made her dream of helping other parents struggling with diabetes come true. Using a tone that never sounds condescending while still delivering very valuable pearls of wisdom from her own experience, Palmer takes the reader through the different stages of parenting in a very well structured and enjoyable way.

She doesn’t stop at sharing her own experience. The book’s 144 pages are also packed with anecdotes from female and male parents as they live through the struggles of parenting with diabetes.

Starting with the considerations leading up to parenthood, including thoughts about gestational diabetes, things to monitor throughout pregnancy and during labor and delivery, the book also even devotes space to adoption as an option for diabetics.

The first year of parenthood, the preschool years, while you still are your children’s hero and the time when you can be a cause of serious embarrassment for them (think how teenage children may feel about having their diabetic parent shoot insulin or test blood glucose in public), all have a space in the book.

A whole chapter is devoted to some of the challenges diabetics want to forget about, such as how to talk with kids about diabetes complications, dealing with diabetes and depression, and a cause of much concern: the worries of one’s own children developing diabetes.

The last pages are spent reminding us diabetics of the things we can and should do to stay healthy and avoid complications as much as possible, so we can live long to enjoy the lives of our children and grandchildren.

All in all, When You’re a Parent With Diabetes: A Real Life Guide to Staying Healthy While Raising a Family is an excellent resource for diabetics, whether they are planning to raise a family or they already have kids and can use a little extra help. If you are diabetic or your partner is diabetic, whether you are male or female, you should definitely get yourself a copy.

If you haven’t joined yet, make sure to visit TuDiabetes.com and become a member of a global community of people touched by diabetes.