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

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.

First ADA approved sugar free energy drink Pit Bull

Via Foodingredientsfirst.com

In the midst of the energy drink boom, Hip Hop Beverage Corporation, a Minority Business Enterprise that manufactures Pit Bull Sugar Free Energy Drink, has been the first energy drink approved by the American Diabetes Association as a free food product for diabetic consumers. Based on the nutrient analysis, serving size and ingredient composition, one serving (8fl. oz) of Pit Bull Sugar Free Energy Drink has no calories, no carbohydrates and most importantly, no sugar. These dietary exchanges are based on the Exchange List for Meal Planning by the American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetic Association.

I know there are plenty of you diabetics out there addicted to energy drinks, which one is your favorite? I know I used to be hooked on Low-carb Monster and man, was that a hard habit to kick. Though now I can say I’m quite happy with my organic green tea

First non-evasive diabetes screening device

Via Foodingredientsfirst.com

A one-minute experimental diabetes screening system that uses light to detect diabetes-related biomarkers found in skin regardless of color will be previewed tomorrow for the first time at the 67th annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association held at McCormick Place. Previously reported studies of a prototype of the portable desktop system have shown it outperforms both the fasting plasma glucose (FPG) test and the A1C test as a rapid and non-invasive screen for pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes. The investigational device, not yet approved for use in the United States, is being designed for use at physician-supervised point-of-care locations.

Known as Scout DS™, manufactured by VeraLight Inc. of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the simple-to-use device weighs about 10 pounds and does not require the patient to fast or provide a blood sample. Using light directed onto a small area of an individual’s forearm the device is able to detect abnormal concentrations of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), which correlate well with diabetes and pre-diabetes and are associated with the disease’s serious complications. The medical device is slated for U.S. market introduction in the second half of 2008.

This looks especially cool but really, 10 pounds?

Artificial Diabetes Pancreas

Via Foodingredientsfirst.com

Scientists in Cambridge say they are moving a step closer to developing an artificial pancreas for people with diabetes.

They are conducting trials in Cambridge with 12 youngsters aged five to 18.

All have type-one diabetes which means their pancreas does not produce insulin – the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.

I have to say either these kids are pretty brave or I’m a big sissy. Though if they get this stable and properly working it would be a really great thing. I just hope it doesn’t malfunction in one of these testers

Khurt over at Honey Sweet posted a great review regarding his experience with SugarStats so far:

“SugarStats.com is a welcome addition to my overall diabetes management strategy. I can only imagine the wonderfully useful things that Marston and his team are working on.”

Well, we’ve officially been launched for a month now! We wanted to share some overall stats of the system, how we’re doing and a tiny bit of the great stuff to come If you haven’t already don’t forget to get your own account free.

We got hit and continue to get hit with loads of traffic but we’re happy to say things are holding up great.

We’ve gotten great response in these first 4 weeks of launch that have helped us greatly improve the system. Within just the first few days alone we had hundreds of new users sign up and thanks to people seeing the value of the system and spreading the word virally this trend is still happening.

First 30 Day Stats

Within the first 4 weeks of launch:

Sugar Readings

• Over 17,500 Sugar Entries Recorded.
• Averaging 147 mg/dL and 9.2 mmol/L respectively

Top 5 Meds:

1. Lantus
2. Humalog
3. Novalog
4. Metformin
5. NovoRapid

Foods

While only premium members can track food/carbs, plenty of food/carb tracking going on:

• Some of you LOVE yogurt, popcorn, peanut butter, orange juice and milk
• Over 2850 meals have been eaten via over 750 different foods
• Over 85,100g grams of carbs consumed
• Avg carbs per food entry: 134g
• Avg carbs per meal: 29g

Before and After Meal Sugar Readings

Before you ask, yes these types of graphs and trends will be making their way into your own SugarStats account. So you premium users can look forward to an even greater look into how your meals affect your blood sugars.

Overall Averages:

• Before Breakfast: 143 mg/dL
• After Breakfast: 154 mg/dL
• Before Lunch: 141 mg/dL
• After Lunch: 150 mg/dL
• Before Dinner: 151 mg/dL
• After Dinner: 158 mg/dL

Activities

Another premium only feature but very important to keep track of:

1. Over 6200 minutes of physical activity tracked. Over 103 hours.
2. Over 206 minutes per day (3.4 hours)

Some of your favorite exercises include:

1. Walking
2. Swimming (one of my favs)
3. Dancing
4. Yoga

Overall Averages (in mg/dL):

• Before Activity: 147
• After Activity: 150

What’s to come

Besides the few that really want to track everything in detail, we’ve gotten absolutely great response from you guys. You’ve told us you love how simple and easy to use the system is. This is great to hear as that is what it was built for, so the average diabetic will actually WANT to use it and then actually be able to understand the statistics.

Even so there are plenty of places we can improve on and you’re helping greatly with that. While we won’t go into detail on our future plans (gotta keep some excitement huh? ), we’re working on some really cool stuff. We’ll give a few little hints:

• Would you like to share your stats (on your blog etc) for all to see your progress?
• Think your mobile phone/PDA browser could be more useful for adding entries?
• Would you like to add friends within SugarStats to see their stats and create a support system?
• Do you use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc?
• Want to show your people better and more informative graphs? (especially for premium users)

Ok ok, thats enough for now. We don’t have dates for specific features but there is plenty of exciting stuff going on over here So don’t forget to create your free account.

Finally, THANK YOU

And finally a big thanks to all our users and BETA testers who have helped craft the site and application. Your support and feedback has been tremendous and we really appreciate all of it. Stay tuned because there is more to come for sure!

Eating bitter melon increases insulin production by 160% in some

Via Foodweek.com.au

“Bitter melon extract, a traditional Chinese medicine, has been tested and found to protect β-cells and increase insulin production in new research presented by Dr Pingfan Rao, Fuzhou University, China.

In traditional Chinese medicine, herbs undergo maillard reaction during sun-drying and boiling, to extract dark colour tonics as remedies. In spite of their prominent presence, maillard reaction products (MRPs) have never been linked to therapeutic effects,” he said.

The scientific team tested bitter melon extract (Mormodica Charantia Extract), an anti-diabetic herbal remedy prepared by boiling extraction of sun-dried fruits.

“The MRPs were found to release reducing agents and bind to the membrane of pancreatic cells and when these cells were treated with MCE prior to alloxan damage, insulin secretion increased by 160% compared to the untreated group

I’m definitely a lover of melons, I can’t deny that. But this is some interesting news to me as I don’t really eat so many bitter melons. It is interesting to see more and more of these studies coming out regarding extracts from natural foods and their potential healing properties. There was also one a while back regarding chili pepper extract curing diabetes in mice.

Americans making progress in managing diabetes

Via Reuters.com

Americans appear to be doing a better job of managing diabetes, with more than half of diabetics reaching recommended targets for controlling blood sugar last year, according to a survey published on Saturday.

Just over a third of people had their diabetes well-controlled in 2001, according to a study of lab tests done on more than 4 million people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Definitely great to hear, the study notes a 44% improvement which is a superb improvement. Obviously the more effort we put into changing our daily habits, routines and focusing on our daily health the better off we’ll be.

One thing I found quite interesting though is they say people find diabetes much harder to manage in the winter as well as being harder for men than it is for women.

The diabetes divide: Is diabetes a surgical or medical disease.

Via aesisgroup.com

During residency (which is not the free-for-all carnival that “Gray’s Anatomy” would have us believe), one of the most important judgment calls that is learned is whether the patient is “sick” or not. This is not in the sense that the patient is faking illness but rather the concept that young doctors gradually learn from experience whether a patient is on the up-trend or down-trend towards recovery.

One of the most important of such decisions is whether a disease is of a surgical or a medical nature. A surgical disease is one which requires some form of intervention such as, of course, surgery (although various vascular interventions and radiation techniques would also fall in this category) while a medical condition implies a pharmaceutical approach to treatment.

Interesting thoughts, though the article might appeal to the more medical minded, it is something worth checking out. Also gives a few ideas to ponder about the future of diabetes treatment.

Promising diabetes research news coming from Canada and Philadelphia:

Pediatrics researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and McGill University in Montreal have identified a gene variant that raises a child’s risk for type 1 diabetes, formerly called juvenile diabetes. As investigators continue to pinpoint genes contributing to diabetes, they have their eyes on providing a scientific basis for designing better treatments and preventive measures for the disease.

More details: http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/gene_discovered_for_type_1_diabetes_in_children

I found this great thread over on diabetesdaily.com about a short story on Gladys Dull who has had diabetes for 83 years. I thought it might be cool for others to read and grab inspiration from. She was diagnosed in 1924 and 60,000 shots later she is still truckin along better than ever.

It really puts things into perspective for those of us living with all the grand “modern medicine” and our fancy pumps and CMG’s. I mean, I know how thick the needles and lancets were 15 years ago when I was diagnosed but I can only image what they had to deal with 30, 40, 50 years ago let alone 80.

So give it a read, some of us “youngsters” should take heed.

A quick snippet:

“In November 1924, three years after the discovery of insulin in 1921, six-year-old Gladys Dull began her long life of insulin injections. To our knowledge, she is the longest-living person with diabetes to date.

Born in North Dakota, Gladys lost her birth parents during a flu epidemic in 1920 when she was only three years old. Fortunately, she and one of her sisters were soon adopted by some neighbors who were part of the farming community there. She remembers feeling sick before her diagnosis and needing to urinate all thetime. After traveling the nine miles from her country home to the nearest doctor, she was diagnosed with type 1. The smalltown doctor, who did not know how to treat diabetes, suggested that her adoptive parents take her to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Gladys remembers the long train trip from her home to the clinic, where she was immediately admitted to the hospital for treatment with the newly available, Lilly-made insulin.