Heart Disease Prevention - The Diabetes-Heart Disease Connection

by: Diana Benzaia

If you saw a tiger, you’d run for your life. But what if you didn’t see it? For those of you with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, heart disease is that unseen tiger. You’re two to four times more likely to develop a heart condition than people without diabetes? Even more shocking, those individuals are more likely to die from heart disease or other cardiovascular ills than from the complications of diabetes itself. Yet surveys show that 68 percent of Americans with diabetes are unaware of their increased cardiovascular risk. 

If you have diabetes, now is the time to take steps to protect your heart. 

“High blood glucose alters cell metabolism,” says Richard Kahn, Ph.D., chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association (ADA). When the function of platelet cells changes, the likelihood of blood clots increases and the risk of heart attack rises. Cells that line the artery walls are also affected; the ability of blood vessels to dilate is impaired, which can lead to high blood pressure. 

One pivotal phenomenon underlying these changes is inflammation, already known to promote heart disease. Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, for example, found high blood glucose linked to chronic inflammation in the blood vessel walls of mice. 

Prevention Works 

The first step to protecting your heart? Control your glucose. In the groundbreaking Diabetes Control and Complications Trial to determine the effects of glucose on complications, type 1 patients underwent intensive glucose control. A later study found these participants were 57 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease over the next 16 years.

Identify the Symptoms of Diabetes

By >> Peter Gyle

Annie was a normal dog. That is until she began to get dog allergies and the doctor prescribed steroids to help her overcome the itching that accompanied her redness and soreness. Over the years I had heard stories about humans that have had bad reactions to steroids, I had just not encountered it in dogs.

The other alternative is that the pancreas continues to produce insulin but the body has become resistant to it, negating the sugar reducing affect it has on the blood. This is termed type 2 diabetes. A similar condition happens to pregnant women. This is known as gestational diabetes and will start during pregnancy and stop after the birth.

While diabetes mellitus is characterized by high blood sugar level, resulting from low insulin (hormone which controls the sugar level in blood) level, the characteristic symptoms are excessive urine production (polyuria), excessive thirst, and increased fluid intake (polydipsia) and blurred vision.

Pregnant women who have never had diabetes before but who have high blood sugar (glucose) levels during pregnancy are said to have gestational diabetes.

Gestational diabetes affects the mother in late pregnancy, after the baby's body has been formed, but while the baby is busy growing. Because of this, gestational diabetes does not cause the kinds of birth defects sometimes seen in babies whose mothers had diabetes before pregnancy.

Any form of stress, particularly an acute infection or neglect of treatment due to carelessness can lead to ketoacidosis. There is intense thirst and polyuria. Constipation, muscle cramps and altered vision are common. Hyperventilation with low blood pressure and acetone may be smelt in the breath and finally it may lead to coma. Glycosuria and ketonuria would be present. Blood glucose levels may be as high as 360-720 mg/dl and low plasma bicarbonate and blood pH.

Smoking cessation treatment is able to help smokers to get rid of their smoking habit. Being a smoker is not a good thing at all because it is addictive, wasteful and deteriorates one's health. Breaking the smoking habit can takes a long time to accomplish. Nonetheless, this particular treatment has some disadvantages.

The so-called diabetic ketoacidosis may rapidly develop. With no insulin, most cells cannot make use of the glucose that is present in the blood. Cells still require energy to stay alive, so they toggle to a back-up mechanism to acquire energy. Fat cells start to break down, producing some substances called ketones.

Increased urination and increased thirst occur as a result of an inadequate amount of insulin or insulin resistance in diabetes, which then results in the increased blood glucose (hyperglycemia). Because without insulin blood glucose cannot be used by cells, it circulates in the blood stream and eventually is secreted by kidneys into the urine, where it binds to water.

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