A collection of miscellaneous D-news items today.  Not to be missed:

♦ If you haven’t already heard about the diabetes community’s push to get Google.com to feature a special Diabetes Doodle on World Diabetes Day (Nov. 14), please read about it right now.  The idea is that Google displays special doodles for all sorts of holidays, like Halloween and Christmas.  So why shouldn’t they use their incredible worldwide visibility to call attention to this killer disease?  What I told my contacts there is that World Diabetes Day is essentially a global holiday, supported by a UN Resolution. 21-million-plus Americans are effected by this disease, ie. 7% of the population.  It costs the US economy $174 billion/year! It’s big, gosh darn it, and well worthy of Google’s attention, to help raise awareness. So please sign the petition. Thanks.

♦ The Chicago Diabetes Project — another thing you absolutely need to read about.  Their mission is to make islet cell transplantation effective and available to millions of people living with diabetes.  A researcher by the name of Dr. Jose Oberholzer is bringing together researchers from across the globe with a very ambitious timeline of human trials, leading to “a functional cure of diabetes.”  Wow.  Read their full story in PDF format HERE.

♦  Concerned about drug side effects? (who isn’t?)  Check out this new online tool that compares drug risks at a site called eHealthMe. It enables you to compare the relative risks of 20,000 different drugs from millions of FDA reports, from 1977 to the present.  So you can at least gauge which drug options might potentially cause which problems.  Looks like this tool allows you to compare 2 drugs at a time for free as a “basic user,” or compare up to 5 drugs against each other if you sign up as a subscription “premium user” (I couldn’t figure out the fee?)  To get a feel for it, see a sample comparison HERE.

♦  A new low-sugar drink mix on the market: Flavrz. This is sort of a side note, but I’m getting pretty sick and tired Crystal Light, despite their variety of flavors.  The Flavrz mix is sweetened with Agave nectar, for half the carbs than “regular drinks” and a low Glycemic Index value, they claim.  I was kind of intrigued by their recipes section; apparently you can use this stuff to create not only martinis, but also chicken and Tilapia fish dishes.

Cheers, and Bon appetit!

Monday, October 13th, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)