July 16, 2010

A Doctor's Perspective on Patients with Chronic Diseases

Once in a while this blogger gets hit with a good one. Do I believe this, YES, but if I hadn't read it with my own eyes, maybe not.  It is also not often that I have a blog that I can write that I do not have to do much research to write.

This is one of the best blogs by doctor about doctor – patient relationships written by a doctor that is not necessarily afraid to go the extra mile for his patients, especially those with chronic diseases, and diabetes is one of the mentioned diseases.

While I will need to reread it several times, he had me crying (a man crying? – yes with happiness!) and then he had me laughing. It is so unusal the to see a doctor say something that many of us patients with diabetes have believed for a long time. His words of caution are well placed and easy to see the reasoning behind them. Many of us patients are a little overly aggressive and as such can make a good doctor very nervous, especially if we are agressively proactive about our care, and not even mentioning patient's rights!

I was expecting to see one of the comments by Trisha Torrey from About dot com and was not disappointed. While she can be argumentative, she was almost, but not quite, tame in her comment. There are lots of comments and I will let you read them for yourself.

I would have made a comment to his blog, but I am hoping that I can reach just as many with this and encourage them to also read his blog – follow the link here. I think you will agree that when placing this doctor on my types of doctors in my blog here, that Dr Rob must be a definite Type six. While there are some things that are not said, for Doctor of Internal Medicine I am not normally that much into giving praise, but an exception is demanded this time.

July 15, 2010

What would or should one do?

This question came up recently about a product that has been written about by another blogger. Don't get me wrong, the blogger did an excellent piece about this product and has great interest in it.  I have been in email contact with the company and I like the idea and the high potential usefulness of the product, but doubt I will ever need it, but who knows.

The product is about 30 months, give or take a few months, from FDA approval. So here is the question.  Do I write about it or wait until it comes on the market?  I am looking for responses whether they are positive or negative.

On the one side, this is a much needed product and will definitely have its place in the market, once it gets past the Federal Drug Administration and their crazy bureaucracy. The negative is that will not happen within 12 or 18 months, but more like 30 months.

This will be an important product for anyone with diabetes that is on insulin.  And yes, I am on insulin.  Have I been in a situation where I would have needed the product? Truthfully, no.  Do I see myself ever needing this product?  Again, no.  Have I ever come close to needing this product?  Here, I need to answer yes.  I admit that the situation could arise, but as careful as I am, the lessons I have learned, and my body has always told me what needs to be done before things get out of hand.  Fortunate, yes, I am.

There are several sides to writing about a product in the development stage that I am trying to resolve in my mind. Before giving any more information, I would like your thoughts, please.

July 12, 2010

Vinegar and diabetes

Let me preface this post by saying “what works for you may not work for me”. When it comes to natural remedies, this statement is so true. If the cost is reasonable, as in the case of vinegar, why should not people at least see if it works for them.

While the only studies (only two and very small) are done by one person, Carol Johnston PhD from Arizona State University, Department of Nutrition, and these studies are held up by many people as fact. I will list several articles, but I can tell you that all cite the studies by Carol Johnston except article 5. Study one is here and study two is here.

Other articles citing Carol Johnston:

Article 1  By The American Diabetes Association (Surprise, as they are normally more conservative).
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4
Article 5

On the internet, there are many people with articles that portray vinegar as the natural remedy for diabetes, but do not list any studies. And for some people, some benefits are derived, but not for everyone. What is more interesting is the way people reference each other and keep referencing in a manner that seems very self-serving and have no basis backed by science. Even citing Carol Johnston would have made much more sense.