Radio Shows | A New Treatment for Diabetes | mp3 … wma … wav

Today, we'll discuss new treatments for a common disease.

Can you name an illness that affects more than 20 million Americans? If you said diabetes, you identified a disease that affects almost 7 percent of us.

You may know there are multiple forms of diabetes. Type I - often referred to as childhood diabetes -results when the pancreas fails to produce enough insulin. Without insulin our cells can't take glucose from the blood and use it for energy.

Type II diabetes which affects adults happens not because of a lack of insulin but from our cells' inability to use it. Again the result is our cells are starved for glucose. That can lead to serious health effects such as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and blindness.

Treatments for type II diabetes include the common drugs sulfonylurea and metformin. One helps the pancreas release more insulin and the other limits the liver's production of glucose.

They work great initially but then patients become progressively resistant, requiring larger doses until the drugs are no longer effective. If you're one of those patients - there's a promising new medicine.

It's just as effective and avoids the dangerous side affects including low blood sugar. This new drug called Januvia is taken orally once a day.

Januvia increases the level of a hormone called GLP-1. This hormone responds to the blood sugar level and then gets the pancreas to release more insulin and the liver to produce less sugar.

Developing new treatments for diabetes is vital because as the age of our population rises, so do the number of diabetics. Remember, always consult your physician when it comes to your health.

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