Category: Living With Diabetes

Yesterday the US Food and Drug Administration approved two new medications – both are shots & each is a combination of two different classes of medication in one shot: a basal long-acting insulin and a GLP-1 receptor agonist. The Novo Nordisk product combines Tresiba, an insulin not yet available in Canada and Victoza while the Sanofi product […]

BCDiabetes Medical Director, Dr. Tom Elliott, has launched a petition to lobby BC Pharmacare to cover SGLT2 inhibitors. As many as 50,000 British Columbians would likely benefit from SGLT2 inhibitors, but many do not have funds or coverage. This class of drug has been shown to reduce mortality for those at high risk of heart […]

Last week the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet published a report summarized here describing dramatic reductions in low blood sugar without any loss of blood sugar control using the Freestyle Libre.   “The Freestyle Libre is the first of a new class of glucose monitoring devices that use “flash” technology.  These devices measure sugar/glucose in the […]

New study questions Type 2 diabetes treatment “No evidence glucose-lowering drugs help ward off long-term complications, researchers say.” This is a massive statement so we sought our medical director, Dr. Tom Elliott, for insight.   The CBC recently reported on a publication by Dr. Victor Montori, of the Mayo Clinic in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes arguing a […]

Have you seen “diabetes” memes? They might show up as candy lasagna or math problems such as “Johnny has 20 candy bars. He eats 12. What does Johnny have?” On one hand, these are a clear indication that the general public is understanding that diet can play a factor in the likelihood of developing Type 2 diabetes, […]

A recent randomized control trial involving a mindful, self-compassion (MSC) intervention showed that that the intervention “increased self-compassion and produced statistically and clinically significant reductions in depression and diabetes distress in the intervention group, with results maintained at 3-month follow-up.” In addition, MSC participants showed a decrease in A1c versus the control group. At BCDiabetes we […]

Today the results of 2 important studies in Type 2 diabetes presented at the annual American Diabetes Association meeting in New Orleans this week were published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. The LEADER study examined the outcomes of 9,340 patients with Type 2 diabetes followed for four years. All took standard diabetes […]

A report on Reuters Health yesterday shared that Type 1 diabetes is tied to risk for a wide range of cancers and that, specifically, “people with type 1 diabetes are more likely than the general population to develop cancers of gastric organs and the kidneys, as well as endometrium and ovaries for women, according to […]

Dr. Jaspaul Riar The Canadian Diabetes Association projects that by 2020, one in three Canadians will have diabetes, be pre-diabetic or have undiagnosed diabetes. These numbers are startling, but what is more shocking is the number of foot amputations this is causing. In 2011-2012, Canadians suffered 2000 foot amputations due to diabetic wounds. This is […]