By
AmyT on
January 12, 2012
Last month, I attended a meeting with the Helmsley Charitable Trust folks in New York, brainstorming with some community leaders on how we can best work together to make life better for people with type 1 diabetes everywhere. One of the folks I met on that trip was Merith Basey, the young, enthusiastic Director of International Operations at the Virginia-based non-profit organization AYUDA (American Youth Understanding Diabetes Abroad). Some things that Merith told me about diabetes…
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When we first heard the term “diabulimia,” we thought it sounded like a made up word for a mythical condition — and in a way, it is. Starting around 2007, diabulimia has become the unofficial diagnosis of an insulin-dependent person living with an eating disorder who purposely stops taking their insulin in order to accelerate weight loss. Without insulin, super-high blood sugars lead to diabetic ketoacidosis, which quickly burns off the body’s fatty acids.
Diabulimia…
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We were familiar with the company ViaCyte through its former identity as NovoCell, when we reported that they’d managed to successfully control diabetes in mice using embryonic stem cells back in 2008.
Last year, they changed their name, but their two-part mission remained the same: first, to create fully functioning beta cells (the specific kind of islet cells that make insulin and amylin) from embryonic stem cells, and then to find a way to combat…
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