(I do realize that ‘gaggliest’ is not a word)
But Lord, I wish I’d kept a list of all the outrageous, ridiculous, upsetting and/or just plain annoying headlines about diabetes over the past year. Wouldn’t that have made a great end-of-year roundup?
In any case, logging on after a week of offline holiday bliss (dinners with
friends, walks on the local nature trail, and assembling a few too many lego contraptions for the kiddos), I was struck by the gagging sensation produced by these choice headlines:
Christmas Could Have Increased Diabetes Risk for Millions, Say Experts – Seriously? Type 2 is all Santa’s fault now? According to this UK article, millions should “Make it your New Year’s resolution to eat more healthily and take regular physical activity.” Wow. Pass that on to your Aunt Joan with the high blood pressure. There’s some news she can use.
Contact Lenses to Manage Diabetes, Soon – It’s the word “soon” that bothers me here. Need I say more?
Artificial Sweeteners May Help Control Blood Sugar – with all due respect to Diabetes Health magazine and Reuters Health, I’m having trouble swallowing this one. I do wonder who initiated and supported this NIDDK research (?)
Low Blood Sugar May Impair Diabetics’ Driving – ya think?! Apparently they needed a university study with 452 diabetic drivers to prove it. Problem documented. Solution? Not so much.
Alarming Levels of Diabetes Found in Fiji – the results came from an eye health survey. This is just weird and upsetting, not just because they’re finding record numbers of people with diabetes there, but because all of the people discovered have already developed diabetic eye disease.
Health Magazine Reveals America’s Healthiest Superfoods – This one came in an email pitch for the new issue coming out Jan. 1, 2010. But wait – um, salmon, blueberries, oats, broccoli, avocados – haven’t we read this like, everywhere, before?
Moral of the story: too much attention to headlines is bad for your blood pressure? There hasn’t been any real diabetes “news” in a very long time? Or possibly: taking breaks from the frenetic pace of cyber-news makes you extra snarky? Hmm, could be all three…
Go with snarky.
Oh, geez, those headlines. Wow. I mean. Come on.
I sighed at each one. Too bad. Maybe 2010 will have something worthy or reading. We can only hope.
Wow…the contact lenses freaks me out…sure it could be a great way of finding out what your BG is, but it’s much harder to work looking through red lenses than with a 400 BG, especially because I’m a graphic artist!
this is the story that caused me the most alarm: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091221123315.htm
What about the type 2′s on insulin? I’m also afraid the attitude in this article will spill over to type 1 in the never-ending confusion between type 1 and type 2.
The real problem is that test strips cost too much!! Has the basic technology even changed in the past 20 years? Still glucose oxidase on there, no?
Please someone make a meter without ridiculously expensive disposable parts!
I’m still shaking my head. That is the media for us. I have sent a few letters out myself this year correcting erroneuos facts.
@xim1970 I highly doubt the ‘see-through’ color will change. That would be absolutely ridiculous.
As usual with our news media it is not just about delivering news but sensationalizing it as well, who was gonna read this anyway if they didn’t put it out that way, every diabetic I know. I mean did they have to add the word soon to the contact lens story, i think not
As a 40 year PWD, I have developed two definitions of the word, “soon”.
In casual conversation, “see ya soon”, means perhaps later this year.
In diabetic scientific advances, “soon”, means, perhaps in your lifetime,
perhaps. Great list!
I frankly, wouldn’t eat salmon as it is full of mercury (unless I were to shell out 3x the amount of money for the wild alaskan salmon. I also don’t eat oats unless my blood sugar is low. And in that case organic oats since the non organic ones are genetically modified to…not be good for you.