BLOG: Milestones and life stories to celebrate World Diabetes Day
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This blog launched in November 2016, and the inaugural post marked the occasion of the International Diabetes Federation’s World Diabetes Day, a global day of recognizing the burdens of diabetes on humans.
World Diabetes Day is also a global day of celebrating the hard work by people living with diabetes as they deal with their sugars on a 24-hour basis.
And, finally, this year we can use this occasion of World Diabetes Day to celebrate the hard work of the medical scientists, the engineers and the manufacturers who have discovered and developed effective treatments for diabetes, both type 1 with the innovations in insulin formulations and insulin delivery and glucose monitoring technologies (pumps and sensors), and type 2 with the non-stop introductions of newer and newer medications.
These last few years have witnessed a new era in managing type 2 diabetes targeting its root cause: obesity.
I am talking, in particular, about GLP-1 receptor agonists. This class of medications is considered a major milestone in the management of type 2 diabetes. The discovery of insulin was the first milestone 100 years ago and was a lifesaver for people with type 1 diabetes.
Then, in the mid-90s, the discovery of the class of insulin sensitizers, thiazolidinediones, was considered a milestone in type 2 diabetes management.
And now, we have the milestone of GLP-1 receptor agonists, referred to as incretins. I have recently heard the concept of BI (before incretins) and AI (after incretins) in a recent eloquent lecture, titled “Medical Bariatrics,” presented by my colleague Dr. Ahmad Abu Limon at Michigan State University’s 40th Michigan Annual Endocrine Symposium (MAES 2023) last week.
News and social media posts and videos about GLP-1 agonists have gone viral. Not only have these products resulted in the best control of hyperglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes, but also they have resulted in significant weight loss, in some cases close to weight loss achieved by bariatric surgery.
We at MSU have been practicing weight-targeted management of type 2 diabetes for a long time, by any means: diet, medications or bariatric surgery — as appropriate and mutually agreed to by patients.
At MSU, we have been immensely inspired by the work of the late Dr. Sarah Hallberg. “Reversing type 2 diabetes starts by ignoring the guidelines” was the title of Sarah’s famous 18-minute TED talk in 2015.
I had the honor of meeting Sarah when she visited MSU in 2019 to give a grand round at our annual Reymond Murray memorial series. I also had the honor of having a virtual meeting with Sarah few weeks before she passed away as I wanted to let her know that I was in the process of writing a post about her story in this blog: I reassured her that I would spread her word and that I will carry on her mission to fight type 2 diabetes by targeting its root cause.
We hold our MAES 2023 symposium, which we held on November 9-10, in November (Diabetes Awareness Month) and around November 14th, World Diabetes Day.
In this year’s symposium, we celebrated Sarah’s life and legacy. As some of my readers know, Sarah passed away in March of 2022 of advanced lung cancer at age 50 years, although she had never smoked.
At the symposium, we listened to a very touching keynote speech presented by Sarah’s friend, Dr. Brittanie Volk, who is a registered dietitian and scientist who has participated in Sarah’s research on reversing type 2 diabetes. I also had the pleasure of meeting Sarah’s mother, Mrs. Ellen Dran, who drove from Lafayette, Indiana, to attend the symposium.
So far, I wrote two posts about Sarah:
The first featured her TED talk, which I watched numerous times (Over 10 million YouTube views, as we speak), and I almost memorized by heart (every word she said). Sarah is amongst the very few people who (like me) uses the term “pre-pre-diabetes.”
The second post was to tell the story of Sarah’s visit to Lansing to give the MSU’s Reymond Murray’s grand round,. I talked about what Sarah later shared with me about how she had struggled not to spill blood on my papers on the podium, as she had a blood draw the day before from her hand dorsum, and it was still bleeding at times (from the effects of blood thinners). At the time, she was undergoing chemotherapy for her lung cancer, which I did not know.
As I am celebrating with my readers the 7th anniversary of this blog, titled “From the Doctor’s Bag,” I am both sad and happy. I am sad because at this year’s symposium I remembered Sarah and happy because we celebrated Sarah’s life and legacy.
Rest in peace, Sarah. We will continue to spread your message, and we will continue to carry on your mission.
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