Monday, March 15, 2008

Small ventures may find the solutions even for diabetes

In science it is always a struggle to get the money you need to finance the exploration of new treatments, new theories and new methodologies. The bigger the company the easier it might become to gather up a big amount of capital for a solid research in a specific area. But the pressure rises with the amount of money being invested exponentially - dooming scientist into success. Therefore small teams are often in better positions to go new ways if there wasn't the law. Rules that make small teams drop out of funds and prizes just for the fact of being owned by 51 percent venture capital often leads to discontinuing of promising researches. Severe diseases like the diabetes mellitus could be tackled by a small team if it just had the freedom to steer its research into an utmost uninfluenced direction. And diabetes is really something that needs to become cured in a better and efficient way for the future of all of us.

World wide approximately 250 million people are affected by diabetes. 50 million in Europe alone. Many million diabetics will add to that number in the coming years. This metabolic disease that causes high blood sugar can lead to dramatic consequences, especially if not treated, not recognized or even ignored. Type-1-diabetes as a result of being partially resistant to insulin is mostly treated by injecting insulin. If measured and controlled strictly the symptoms and further problems can be handled quite well nowadays. The patient has to be on his toes all the time. Thoroughly considering what he is eating and how much. Balancing out the produced bloodsugar with another injection of insulin, no matter where he is and be it on top of Mount Everest. If not treated properly it even can lead to a diabetic coma which is a life-threatening passed out condition caused by the severe lack of insulin. Only a stationary treatment over several days within an intensive care unit provides a slow and controlled return into a balanced metabolism.

Beside the medical treatment that is used if suffering from diabetes, the correct diet is a major part to handle life with this disease. There is nothing specific someone with diabetes can not eat at all. It is more about the proportion of the specific parts of the nutrition. Protein and steato should not represent more than 10 - 20 % of the overall daily food consumption. Vegetable protein has to be preferred over animal protein as this is known for damaging the kidneys. And people with diabetes are prone to kidney problems anyways. Sugar, in contrast to popular opinion, is the smaller problem that only rises together with the corresponding big amount of fat that especially comes from sweets. But for the fact that sugar comes along with a lot of eatables it is recommended to reduce the intake of sugar to 10 % of the daily nutrition. Another important thing to know is the glycemic index. It is an expression for the effectiveness of sugar within our body. Depending on what kind of carbohydrates a certain food product contains, the metabolism is reacting differently. Dextrose for example is reacting very fast, pushing the blood sugar upwards quickly. Nuts and vegetables however are raising the blood sugar level very slowly making it therefore much easier to handle the overall balance without risking sudden problems.

A few more guidelines help living with diabetes. The interesting part is that those guidelines and rules apply to healthy people in the same way. They just can ignore them more easily without instantly suffering severe consequences. None the less it does damage to them on the long run and may lead to diabetes at higher age. Therefore everyone really should take a close look at all the ingredients that are used in our daily food products.