Jo’s Cafe

In last weeks’ post, I noted my distrust (and distaste) for the New York Slimes and how people need to stop taking what they report as in stone.

Well — I was right.

New diabetes study supports intensive treatment

A week after the medical community was stunned by research showing that aggressive treatment of diabetes produced a higher death rate, a new analysis by a separate team of researchers has found that intensive treatment does not pose such a risk.

The take-home message from the back-to-back studies - the first led by a team of American researchers, the latest by Australians - is not one of scientific flip-flopping but one of taking a wait-and-see approach, doctors said yesterday. Neither study is the be-all and end-all of diabetes research.

[...] Scientists at the George Institute for International Health in Sydney say aggressively reducing blood sugar is not dangerous. Interim results from their study, called ADVANCE, does not suggest a higher death rate because blood sugar is intensively lowered.

To steal a statement from Amy, bottom line up front: Do what your doctor says, not the New York Slimes.

• Statement from the ADA on the ADVANCE study.
• Diabetes study contradicts US trial

KitKat saves mum from coma

AN EGREMONT [Cumbria] woman has praised the quick thinking of her nine-year-old daughter after she prevented her falling into a coma by feeding her a KitKat.

Jill Renton, 32, of King’s Drive, has suffered from diabetes for 17 years and monitors her blood sugar level six times a day.

But when her two daughters, Abbie, nine, and Alyssa, five, were getting ready for school they noticed their mum’s blood sugar was low and she was seriously ill.

Abbie forced her mum to eat chocolate after testing her blood sugar level, dressed her younger sister and went across the road to her grandmother’s house to raise the alarm.

Bravo Abbie

• Amy tells us about “Skinny Songs“
• Ellen Goodman [Boston Globe] has the “… skinny on the American diet.“