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These are some of the main negative consequences of the attempt to control the diabetic condition - the principal aim being good health, which it is sometimes difficult to appreciate as a significant achievement.

The main complication of ‘over-control’ is hypoglycemia, which can really ruin your day - and the days of the people around you. Such complications are typically short-term, however, as it is comparatively easy to treat by the consumption of sugary food or drink. As it’s very difficult to maintain a normal lifestyle when continuously twitching, soaked in sweat and unable to control your limbs your diabetic sufferer will, hopefully, be prepared for this eventuality online pharmacy shipp international.

Not all hypo-incidents are quite so severe, but IDDM hypos are typically more dramatic than NIDDM hypos, due to the larger doses of insulin involved. The ’secondary complications’ of hypoglycemia are not so easy to treat. Injuries due to car crashes undergone while under the influence of hypoglycemia, for example, are difficult to dismiss, and it is quite easy to smash your own head open while banging it on the ground in a fit of hypoglycemic frustration.

A related complication of hypoglycemia is the phenomenon known as ‘hypoglycemic unawareness’, which, typically, affects insulin-dependent individuals undergoing intensive therapy. Widely encountered by insulin-dependants after the introduction of ‘human’ - or genetically engineered - insulin analogues during the 1980s11, this phenomenon eliminates native adrenal responses to an approaching hypo, meaning that the diabetic cannot ’see them coming’. With habituation to lower BSLs, this also means that diabetics on intensive therapy are more prone to lose the behavioural symptoms which might characterise a hypoglycemic episode from the ‘outside’ until the episode is so well advanced that it is difficult to resolve without medical attention. As intensive therapy implies more injections12 - and requires more blood testing - than would occur otherwise, this phenomenon increases the number of hypoglycemic episodes that the diabetic is likely to have. As a result, due to the increasing popularity of intensive therapy in preventing other complications, hypoglycemia has become a more visible and feared issue in the treatment of IDDM than it was previously.

The notable potential complications of ‘under-control’, or maintaining BSLs which are too high, are generally longer-term, and include diabetic retinopathy13, diabetic neuropathy, diabetic nephropathy14, gangrene and subsequent amputation, impotence15 and lesser circulatory disorders. In the shorter term, a high BSL can make you feel bad - moody, short-tempered, lethargic, prone to urination - but there are fairly straightforward ways of dealing with this problem. Only if the high BSLs become habitual do you have cause to be overly-concerned.

It is widely believed diabetic complications are the direct consequence of the medical profession’s increasing ability to treat the diabetic condition, and apply as outcomes across all types of diabetes. They occur in insulin-dependent diabetics mostly because the administration of insulin allows them to live long enough for the complications to present, rather than simply to be killed by the condition itself. Diabetic complications are one of the chief burdens on the hospital systems of several developed countries, and the public health strategies of these countries for dealing with IDDM typically involve addressing a potential immunisation against the condition and instruction in the avoidance of complications, rather than a ‘cure’ for IDDM itself, as most sufferers hope for. Some of the complications may also apply to insulin-dependent individuals who remain untreated, although IDDM more often causes death before the complications become a burden - as they do to treated individuals. Although a definite link between chronically high BSLs and complications has been established, the link is not definitely causal - so some people can ‘get away with’ much higher BSLs than would be possible for others to do. The actual occurrence of complications can also frequently appear completely arbitrary, no matter how well-controlled the diabetic who suffers them.

Latest Research

At the time of writing, new research has just been published on pancreatic islet cell transplantation for insulin dependent diabetes.

The research reports on a new regimen for transplanting pancreatic islet cells from cadaveric donors (victims of road accidents etc, who are brain dead) using new immunosuppressants to decrease rejection of transplanted tissue. It was found that all of the seven people in the study remained free form the need for insulin injections (average follow up at the time of writing so far is 11 months). The main drawback is that each individual has had to have at least two transplants. The transplant procedure involved inserting a small catheter into one of the neck veins, passing it down and through the liver into the veins near the pancreas and injecting the islet cell preparation into the vessels around the pancreas. This can be done under light sedation and does not need a general anaesthetic.