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:

The numbers shared in the report about the state of obesity in Australia today are alarming:

“Almost three-quarters of Australian men and two-thirds of women living in rural areas may be overweight or obese and at risk of diabetes, arthritis and other chronic diseases, a new study said.”

Unfortunately, the report doesn’t clarify that there are two types of diabetes and the one that people are at risk of due to being overweight is type 2 Diabetes.

As noted in Wikipedia, “despite the similarity in complications, [type 1 and type 2 diabetes] have quite different origins and treatments”. To this day, there is no known way to prevent type 1 diabetes.

More details about the report: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aBxnJmNqco.o&refer=australia

Discussion about the bundling of type 1 and type 2 under the “diabetes” denomination in the media: http://tudiabetes.com/forum/topic/show?id=583967%3ATopic%3A27101

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!

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.

Hours of TV watched increases HBA1C levels

Via PrNewsWire.com

The more hours of TV
kids with type 1 diabetes watch, the less they are able to maintain good
blood glucose control, according to a study published in the June issue of
Diabetes Care.

The study by researchers in Norway found that the more television a
child or adolescent watched, the higher the child’s average blood glucose
level measured. For example, young people who watched less than one hour of
television per day scored an average level of 8.2 percent on the HbA1c, a
test that measures how well blood glucose is controlled over several
months. Those who watched up to 2 hours daily scored 8.4 percent; up to 3
hours daily scored 8.7 percent; up to 4 hours daily scored 8.8 percent; and
those who watched more than 4 hours of TV per day scored 9.5 percent on the
A1C test. The ADA recommends keeping A1C levels at 7 percent or below.

Very interesting study to say the least. I should consider myself lucky I grew up with little TV… Though I don’t think that helped my a1c levels much As for my current viewing habits… I guess I’ll have to cut down on my CSI and 24.

Diabetes reaching crisis level. CDC estimates 41 million pre-diabetic

Via Blackvoicenews.com

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates that one in three children born in the U.S. five years ago is expected to become diabetic in their lifetime. The number of diabetics has grown by 80% in the past decade.

The CDC also estimates that 21 million Americans have high blood sugar levels and are therefore diabetic, but don’t realize it because the outward signs are not showing…yet. The CDC also estimates 41 million others are pre-diabetic, with blood sugar levels steadily increasing. Most people with early signs of the disease are not taking necessary action by more-carefully choosing what they eat.

This number just keeps going up and up. While hearing news like this is sad, it is something to be aware of in order for people to start taking control and help to change the trend. I know it took me a while to change my eating habits, but it was worth it. Sooner or later all the fast food, deep fried food and gallons of coke a day catches up with you. A fight any persons pancreas just can’t win.

It reminds me of the quote:

“If you keep doing what you’ve always done. You’ll keep getting what you’ve always got”

New Diabetes Compression Sock

Via Vivantmedical.com

Diabetes affects every aspect of a person?s health, including their feet. menzies-med introduces Dia-Flow, a diabetic support sock that protects the feet while helping to increase circulation.

Thought I personally don’t have circulation problems or problems in general with my feet, I know others might find this useful. There have been times though of very bad BG management on me part, I started to feel the effects in my feet… It scared me to death and provided me with all the motivation I needed to try and keep things under control. Hearing that 54,000 diabetics have amputations each year is yet another reminder. Yikes!

We’ve been getting some great feedback recently and I must say it is great to hear. I know using SugarStats personally has made a huge difference in my life but hearing it from other people really confirms how it was all worth In a few weeks of simple tracking and bringing his awareness to it his average dropped 10%!

Manny from TuDiabetes.com has been using it himself for only a few weeks and posted a review with some great things to say, he even made a video!

If you don’t see the video here is a direct link to it on YouTube

If any of you have experiences or feedback of SugarStats you’d like to share then we’d love to hear it, send it over to info@sugarstats.com

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.

It’s no surprise to anyone who has diabetes how much the medication costs. Though some are covered by insurance, many are not. It’s easy to brush off the hundreds of dollars it would cost for a month or two supply of test strips when the insurance pays for it, it is quite different when you have to yourself.

But the truth is there more to pay for and more at stake than just paying for the medicine and supplies. There are the cost of surgeries and hospital visits that are the results of diabetic complications.

From a Yahoo! Article: The Surprisingly High Cost of Diabetes

“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.”

Some of the notables:

• 3 out of 5 Type-2 Diabetics in the U.S. suffer complications costing an estimated $22.9 Billion in 2006.
• It accounts to nearly $10,000 per person in health care costs.
• That cost is nearly 3x higher than for non-diabetics.
• On average, people with complications paid $1,566 out-of-pocket annually.

Definitely something to think about. The cost of diabetes is rising in more ways than one. This just underlines the need for better management, better education and overall better awareness of diabetes from diabetics themselves as well as the general public.