Tag: heart disease Posts

A few weeks ago I went into the doctor’s office to get a pile of tests done on myself. For those of you that remember, last year I came down with a clostridium difficile infection, which is a superbug that typically only affects people who end up in hospitals on broad spectrum antibiotics. When I was in the hospital last year with pneumonia, I ended up getting it, and it was a very nasty experience that took three rounds of antibiotics to get rid of. That being said, my stomach has never really been the same, and I frequently have an upset stomach or cramps still. Since C. Diff. has about a 30% recurrence rate (that is, in 30% of people who are cured, it usually comes back), I wanted to get another round of tests to make sure it hadn’t returned. Also, since C. Diff typically only affects older […]

I was coming into work this morning, and I read this on the front page of the Vancouver Sun. This is pretty big news in the medical community. Apparently some researchers at UofT have found a way to reverse diabetes in Type 1 diabetic mice. This is exciting because it was always thought that type I diabetic people lost the ability to produce insulin because their own immune system completely destroyed the beta cells in the pancreas. However, the beta cells in these mice became active again once they had an injection. Here’s the original article. Also surprising is that this approach also seems to remove the symptoms of type II diabetes (sometimes called hyperinsulinemia or insulin resistance). In Type II, the body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin. So, to reduce the blood sugar in your body, your pancreas has to secrete far larger amounts than normal. This […]