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1922After 3,000 years with no effective treatment, diabetes is no longer a quick death sentence. Canadian researchers extract insulin from a dog, inject it into a 14-year-old diabetic boy, and extend his life. 1935Researchers advance the theory that diabetes is not a single disease and divide it into two categories: insulin sensitive (what we call [...]

Normally, the pancreas sends out just enough of the right hormone to keep the blood glucose level within the narrow range of “just enough.” But in diabetes something has gone wrong. The blood sugar rises far above the normal limit—perhaps up to 200, 300, or even 1000 mg% or more. This condition (too much sugar [...]

For many years, physicians who dealt with diabetic patients were often passive in their treatment strategies. There were reasons for this. Many type 1 diabetics were very difficult to manage, alternating between hyper- and hypoglycemia, and progressing with complications of visual impairment, renal insufficiency, and neurologic disabilities. Assessment of results was crude, and action steps [...]

It was widely (and wrongly) believed for many years that sugar and starchy foods like potato, rice and pasta were the cause of obesity. Twenty years ago, every diet for weight loss advocated restriction of these carbohydrate-rich foods. One of the reasons for this carbohydrate restriction stemmed from the ‘instant results’ of low carbohydrate diets. [...]