Professor Chan was principal investigator of the ADVANCE (Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease: Preterax and Diamicron Modified Release Controlled Evaluation Trial) team at the University of Malaya
Medical Centre, one of the five participating centers in Malaysia.

“What we can say from ADVANCE is that if we lower sugar blood level safely towards normal, without causing hypoglycemia and weight gain, we can reduce the complications from diabites,” Chan told the audience in a media tutorial organized by Servier Malaysia, to announce the results of the ADVANCE blood glucose arm.

“Importantly, we did not see an excess of death from improving glucose control down to normal. I think that is a very important point. And although we did not see a clear benefit in terms of reducing heart attacks or
stroke, we did not cause more harm to our patients.”

The ADVANCE glucose arm showed a significant reduction in the risk of serious complications among intensively controlled patients – a 10 percent relative risk reduction in combined major macro- and microvascular events.

Chan said this reduction was mainly due to the 21 percent relative decrease in new or worsening nephropathy in patients treated intensively. Severe proteinuria was noted reduced in intensively controlled diabetes patients.

What people refer to as Diabetes or Diabities is actually the short form of Diabetes Mellitus, a disease that occurs when there is an elevation of sugar blood level (commonly referred to as blood glucose level). Glucose is a form of energy that the body needs for it to function normally.

The common sources of glucose in humans is through food
1. Starchy foods (carbohydrates) such as rice, bread, and noodles
2. Actual glucose whether in simple glucose form or complex forms (such as fruit sugars, milk sugars, honey,) which are broken down into simple sugars in the body.

Once glucose is absorbed in through the intestines, it is distributed throughout the whole body. At the cellular level, a hormone called insulin is responsible for the entry of glucose into the cells for usage.  It is at this level where we see certain situations whereby there is a resistance to the effect of insulin (insulin resistance) giving rise to an increased sugar blood level.  Another diabetes cause is where there is inadequate or no production of insulin by the cells responsible for this, known as the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas.

Treatment of diabities in principle is quite simple

1. Start off on a diet for diabetes – with emphasis on healthy living and calorie control. Control of diabetes and diet are closely related.  Diabetic treatment with drugs but without dietary control is not ideal.

2. Diabetic Drugs. Two major varieties are often described - One type to stimulate the release of insulin from the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas, the other type to promote the movement of sugar into the cells.

3. Insulin therapy.

4. Management of complications of diabities (both prevention of these complications and treatment of complications of diabetes if and when they occur), for example, heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, nerve complications, skin problems, etc.  More about this in another article.

Diabities Complications - Early detection and management is essential.

Testing For Diabetes

It is far better to have the early symptoms of diabities when one is suffering from the disease than not to have any diabetic symptoms at all.  This is because if one does not have symptoms of diabetic disease, one does not feel unwell, there is no visit to the doctor to confirm or diagnose the disease, and one is at great risk of complications occurring due to untreated diabetes.

Symptoms that one should watch out for in early diabities:  sudden weight loss or gain, thirst, increased urination (you wake up several times nightly to pee), increased appetite, tiredness, increased frequency of fungus infections in the body, a reduction of healing time for wounds.

In late diabities, the symptoms will be those of complications – usually these are not reversible.  Thus one may present with poor vision, blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks and strokes.

Diagnosis is simple enough.  Go to your doctor after a 12 hour fast.  Get a fasting sugar blood level done on the spot in the clinic.  If the level is more than 5.5mmol per litre, you are diabetic.  Whether you have symptoms or not is immaterial.  Urine tests to diagnose diabetes are unreliable.

A lot can be said for routine testing for diabetes for the general public.  This will detect a great deal of previously undiagnosed diabetics, and early treatment of this serious disease helps a great deal in preventing, or at the very least delaying, the onset of diabetic complications.

Diabetes and Hair Loss

The most common form of diabetes mellitus is Type 2 Diabetes (also known as diabetes two). This is also a very underdiagnosed condition, with millions of people unaware that they have diabities until it is seen on a routine sugar blood level test or until they get complications from this illness.

Diabetes occurs because the body either does not produce enough insulin it needs or the insulin does not reach the required cells. In diabetes, microcirculation is impaired – blood does not reach where it needs to go.

In order to understand how diabetes and hair loss are connected, it is essential have a quick understanding of the physiology of hair growth.

Hair growth goes through phases of growth (2 to 6 years), resting (2 to 3 months), and dropping for each hair follicle, with a new hair redeveloping in the follicle after the last hair has dropped. In diabetes, because of poor microcirculation to the hair root, the rate of redevelopment of the new hair is slowed.

There are a few other ways diabities is related to hair loss.

If the hair loss is related to fungal infection secondary to the diabetic condition, treatment of the fungus will stop further hair loss.
Stress caused by chronic diabities can lead to hair loss.
Similarly medications prescribed for diabetes two can also lead to hair loss.