Post #20263 by Humuhumu on Sun, Jan 19, 2003 11:50 AM

I think my husband is able to get away with the "just take some insulin" approach because he's gotten very good at gauging exactly how much insulin he's going to need, or how much more food he needs to eat to match the insulin he's taken. Right now, he stocks Humolog, N, R, and Glargine, and uses whatever is appropriate. He's able to keep very tight control, and his annual tests are always fantastic. And, as I said before, the only thing he's stricken from his diet are straight fruit juice and soda pop. Mr. Humuhumu (who actually is Dr. Humuhumu, M.D., Ph.D., but prefers to go by Mr.) has had diabetic patients in the past, and probably hasn't advised them to do what he does -- most people aren't as anal about control as he is, and wouldn't be able to pull it off. However, when a fellow doctor was just recently diagnosed with Type 1, he advised her that it was possible to lead a more normal life than the docs tell you. Mr. Humuhumu assures me that his endocrinologist (who's really good -- one of the world's type 1 experts) knows how he is choosing to manage his diabetes, and thinks it's probably okay. But we won't have any way to say for sure that it's safe until he dies after a long and complication-free life. So I dunno, maybe you can just look at Mr. Humuhumu as an experiment for future diabetics to look back and learn from.

Re: Type 1 research v. Type 2 research -- I wish I had some figures on research dollars I could give you right now -- maybe when I'm back in the office. At any rate, 90-95% of diabetics have Type 2 (and that imbalance is growing), so it may be appropriate that 95% of the info you see is for them. However, Type 1 does hit children (although these days, Type 2 does too, which is alarming), and is of course a more serious disease, so I do think it's gotten much more than 5-10% of the research dollars.

So little is really biologically understood about diabetes that much of the research being done (particularly in the area of complication prevention) benefits both diseases.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has been an amazing force in Washington D.C. They are rated very highly by charity watchdog groups for keeping overhead costs high. At the same time, not only are they funding some very innovative Type 1 research, they have (successfully) put substantial pressure in the NIH to fund more Type 1 research. A year and a half ago, when President Bush was constructing his policy on stem cell research, the president of JDRF was sitting in the Oval Office lobbying for stem cell research. From where I'm sitting, Type 1 is getting a lot of attention, and a lot of money.

Again, I wish I had Type 1 v. Type 2 funding #'s. I could totally be wrong. If I am, I'm afraid that a lot of Type 2 funding is also appropriate -- it will benefit Type 1s, and the explosion of Type 2 patients is going to be a huge drain on the health care system in the future.

Personally, I think that the research currently being done is fantastically promising. I think that there will be some substantial advances that will really dramatically impact the lives of Type 1 diabetics (if not total prevention, then by dramatically lessening the risk of complications, or increasing quality-of-life), within our lifetimes. But I could be totally talking out of my ass.